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N°12 | SUMMER 2014

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Certified sustainable bioenergy production in Africa is feasible and necessary. Sierra Leone and many other African states are ready to prove it, but they need predictable and attractive markets, such as the EU’s 10% renewable energy target in transport.

Sierra Leone, like the whole African conti-nent, is undergoing rapid change. Attracting investment, improving the business climate and diversifying the economy are priorities for our government in the coming years. In agriculture, Sierra Leone is moving away from mainly subsistence production of rice to commercialized production of diverse crops.

In collaboration with a number of important stakeholders, the Government of Sierra Leone adopted guidelines for sustainable agricultural and bioenergy investment which equally apply to investors, civil society, and local communities, both for domestic devel-opment and certified export. These guide-lines take into account the European Union’s renewable energy legislation, to ensure that best practices are adopted in Sierra Leone.

Sustainable biofuels can bring real benefits to both the EU and Africa’s developing coun-tries. While the EU can gain from substantial

supplies of high-performing certified biofuels, investments in bioenergy can enhance Afri-ca’s neglected agricultural sector and yield important benefits such as improved infra-structure which is vital for food security and development. The spillover effects of bioen-ergy investments into overall development, in the form of increased productivity and poverty reduction, are crucial for Africa’s future.

African bioenergy is full of potential, for the continent and for the EU’s 10% renewable energy target. Production costs of sugar-cane ethanol are consistently below $0.3 per liter, which is ten times below the price of gasoline in Germany. Sugarcane ethanol production achieves 80% CO2 savings com-pared to gasoline, and even more compared to unconventional oil sources like tar sands and shale gas. African soils generally con-tain very low levels of carbon which, com-bined with the selection of degraded land and proper agricultural practices, result in keeping carbon emissions from Land-Use-Change to a minimum.

Biofuels represent a real opportunity for African farmers and a huge potential to drive green growth in Africa. As biofuels can be locally produced, stored, trans-

ported and traded easily, their potential to attract investment is high. With 2/3 of the African population dependent on farming, investment in the agricultural and renew-able energy sectors can drive productivity, improve farming techniques, increase com-petitiveness in other economic sectors and create local employment.

There are risks associated with the expan-sion of bioenergy crops, but dismissing biofuels altogether because of potential unidentified indirect risks does not take into account the economic and environmental benefits of African bioenergy agriculture. The EU should give the African biofuels sec-tor a chance to prove its ability to substan-tially contribute to the 2020 EU renewable energy targets and beyond. The EU should keep its important leadership role in setting standards for sustainable production prac-tices. Without this global leadership, there would be no less bioenergy on the market, but less sustainable bioenergy.

However, there is a distinct lack of coherence between setting very high standards for bio-fuels and cutting the volumes: if African bio-energy meets the EU’s sustainability criteria, then they must have a positive impact and should be encouraged. Reducing biofuels volumes – as currently being discussed in the EU – will create barriers to entry to even the best performing bioenergy crops. Such an incoherent policy will jeopardize projects and cause yet another lost opportunity for the African agricultural and energy sectors.

For more on sustainable development in Africa, read our “Status Report of South Sudan” (pp.60-67) and “Hydro Power in Rural Africa” (pp.68-74).

Special Guest Editorial

Mr. Oluniyi Robbin-CokerFormer Minister of Energy and Water, Sierra Leone

Africa’s Sustainable Bioenergy Potential

N°12 | SUMMER 2014

Bioenergy for Sustainable Transport in AfricaEuropean Parliament, Brussels, June 25, 2014, 14:00-18:30

Join PANGEA and EUACC at this event to share key case studies on bioenergy production in transport in Africa highlighting current opportunities and challenges facing the bioenergy sector.

For more information please contact : kerry@pangealink.org

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Launching the energy generation of the futureThe EDF Group is working to develop an energy mix that is both competitive and low-carbon. EDF is a leading producer of electricity from renewable sources, with the largest hydro kCCR�GL�#SPMNC�?LB�QMJGB�NMQGRGMLQ�GL�UGLB�?LB�QMJ?P�NMUCP�through its subsidiary EDF Energies Nouvelles.

.PMjJC��O�4,782 MW of net installed wind energy capacity O�555 MW of net installed solar energy capacity O�€1.6 billion annual investments, or more than a third of the EDF Group’s total investments in new generation capacity in 2013.

Off the English coast, in Teesside, 27 offshore wind turbines

generate enough electricity to power 40,000 households while

offsetting the release of some 80,000 tons of CO2.

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“I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable. […] I believe, then, that when the deposits of coal are exhausted we

shall heat and warm ourselves with water. Water will be the coal of the future.”Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island, p.252

SUSTAINABILITY

06 | The European Investment Bank highlights the key dimensions of its “Sustainable Energy Trident”.

ENVIRONMENT

10 | Pig-farming in North Carolina has devastating effects on the environment and rural communities.

BUSINESS

18 | Steve Laycock, CEO of Alteari, talks about the energy transition and the future of innovation.

FOCUS

20 | Europe’s electricity grids are expanding rapidly and are increasingly going underground!

INNOVATION

28 | The most abundant element in the universe – hydrogen – is a tremendous energy source

VIEWS

35 | Highlights of Revolve’s photo exhibit Visualizing Energy 2014 about the “rise of renewables”

DEVELOPMENT 60 | A status report of South Sudan by

Raluca Raduta and insights into the great potential of small hydropower in Tanzania by Jacopo Pendezza.

CULTURE

76 | Two Italian architects are taking their artistic water-collecting Warka Project to Ethiopia.

CONTRIBUTORS

Mabel Beatriz TudinoKhalid BenhamouRafaelle CiasulloMarcelo ContiMarcello Del BrennaYasmin GalbraithSteve LaycockSally LeeJacopo PendezzaRaluca RadutaArturo VenturiVolker WendtErnesto Zaccone

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Scott Bauer Morten BrakestadAndreea CampeanuTom D’HaenensJure ErzenMatthias IbelerSteve MorganMaximilan MutzhasGabriele RigonGiacomo SpigarelliGunnar Svanberg SkúlasonMarkus Tiburzi

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Filipa Rosa

ENERGY ASSISTANT

Edoardo De Silva

RESEARCHER

Marcello Cappellazzi

COMMUNICATIONS ASSISTANTS

Maria-Teresa BucoYasmin Galbraith

INDIA/ASIA:

REGIONAL MANAGER

Rajnish Ahuja

COMMUNICATIONS ASSISTANT

Aakriti Chaudhari

FOUNDING EDITOR

Stuart Reigeluth

REVOLVE MAGAZINE (ISSN 2033-2912) is registered in Belgium, BE 0828.676.740.

Printed with vegetable-based ink on chlorine-free paper, REVOLVE uses FSC approved paper (for more on how REVOLVE is a sustainable magazine see p.82).

www.revolve-magazine.com

Cover image: A burst of solar material leaps off the left side of the sun in what is known as a prominence eruption. Source: Wikipedia.

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The Sustainable Energy TridentThe European Investment Bank’s (EIB) reason for existing is to promote jobs and growth in the European Union and further afield. After several challenging years during the financial crisis, the consensus is that recovery has commenced, but it is a slow process and one that must be managed carefully and sustainably. Nowhere is this more relevant than in the vital sector of energy.

EIB lending to energy projects is governed by strict new criteria regarding sustainability and cleanliness, and focuses on three elements in particular: renewable energy sources, energy efficiency and research, development and innovation (RDI). Investing in cutting consumption and securing supply are just as important as the production side. Exploring new technologies is equally relevant in reducing emissions and ensuring the development of a low-carbon, green, productive, sustainable and progressive economy.

The EIB Group is the financing arm of the European Union and its 28 Member States.It promotes sustainable growth and jobs inside and outside Europe.www.eib.org

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Harnessing the Northern Sea AirRenewable energy is full of potential, and the EIB has been active in financing renew-able energy projects in both EU and non-EU nations for many years. It is important to find the right method of harnessing renew-able sources for the right location: northern Europe, for example, is beginning to take advantage of its wind energy potential, notably across the North Sea, where new wind farms have been co-financed by the EIB. Belgium’s Belwind off-shore facility benefitted from a loan of !300 million and since 2010 has been producing an output of 165 MW per year, enough electricity to power 175,000 homes, saving carbon diox-ide emissions of 270,000 tons per year.

Germany’s EnBW Baltic 2 wind farm will be even larger when it enters into service later this year, providing electricity to 340,000 households and cutting CO2 emissions by 900,000 tons per year. The EIB contributed !500 million towards the project.

More than the Southern SunThe Mediterranean region also enjoys great potential for renewable energy generation, from both wind and solar power. The EIB is fully engaged with the European Com-mission and Union for the Mediterranean’s Solar Plan (MSP), which has the ambition of generating an additional capacity of 20 GW from renewables by the year 2020,

enabling Mediterranean Partner Countries to secure their own energy supply from clean sources, and eventually export to the EU as well, thereby offsetting emissions and providing energy security in both regions. Under this scheme, the EIB has invested in Morocco’s nascent large-scale solar pro-gram by investing in the Ouarzazate solar facility which, upon completion, will be able to provide all of the electrical needs for the equivalent of a town of 250,000 people.

A further solar project to have received EIB support is Gemasolar, in Andalusia, Spain. The plant uses innovative technology and is the first commercial solar facility in the world to be able to generate electricity with-out sunshine. This works by using molten salt instead of oil as a transfer fluid. Over

Image: Belwind offshore wind farm, Belgium.Source: Matthias Ibeler, DOTI 2010 / Alpha Ventus

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2,600 mirrors concentrate the sun’s rays onto a giant receiver at the center. This heats up the liquid salt to a temperature of over 500°C, which in turn generates hot-ter and more pressurized steam to drive the turbines more efficiently. The way the heat is stored in the salt allows the plant to supply energy to the grid for up to 15 hours when there is no sunshine, at night-time or under cloud cover, for example. Gemasolar has a capacity of 19.9 MW, and can sup-ply electricity to 27,500 households, saving 30,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year.

Travelling East and a few degrees South across the Mediterranean, the EIB has also lent just over $72 million to support the construction of the onshore Tafila wind farm in land-locked Jordan, a country that relies overwhelmingly on fossil fuel derived energy imports. In 2020, when the project is com-plete, it will account for 10% of Jordan’s

renewable energy target of 1,200 MW, to be achieved by that year. Interestingly, Tafila will be located along a migratory flight line for birds. EIB environmental experts worked with the local team to adapt the wind farm’s operations to protect the migrating birds.

Cutting Consumption, Improving LifeThe way we consume energy must evolve alongside the way we produce it. The EIB is a natural partner in promoting various smarter ways to go about daily life, ben-efitting people and the planet. In the Euro-pean Union, many countries have imple-mented thermal rehabilitation programs for urban buildings to save on heating costs and cut emissions. Romania is one

such country; the capital city, Bucharest, is home to around two million people.

Between 1950-1990 around 650,000 apartments were built in the city and have been left largely untouched. 90% of Bucharest residents own their prop-erties, but few can afford the estimated !6,000-8,000 costs to refurbish them. City authorities cover the costs to make the buildings more energy efficient. Since 2010, the EIB has invested a total of !282 million in the program, which has seen around 52,000 Bucharest apart-ments pass from a D to a B grade when it comes to the energy passport. Energy consumption has been cut by between 37-49% in these homes. There remains much to be done, but Bucharest is mak-ing progress in becoming more energy efficient, and its citizens are feeling the benefits in their wallets.

To forge a cleaner future, we must put together a multi-faceted approach to energy.

Breathing Again Through Efficiency and InnovationThere are other ways to make cities greener and more pleasant in addition to modern-izing buildings. Far too many urban centers are suffocated by fumes and see major transport arteries clogged. The EIB sup-ports sustainable transport projects in cit-ies across the world. These improve the air and quality of life, and encourage drivers to travel via different means. An example of this can be found in Warsaw, Poland, where the bank has lent !238 million towards the

construction of the East-West axis of the city’s metro system, as well as a further !139 million for the purchase of 35 mod-ern energy-efficient trains for use in the network. This will take traffic off the streets of Warsaw, and the modal shift could cut annual CO2 emissions by an estimated 42,000 tons.

The bank is backing a similar scheme in Quito, Ecuador, where a 22.5 km North-South underground rail system is expected to replace 320,000 car journeys, cutting CO2 emissions by 30,000 tons per year in the 2.2 million Andean city.

Innovating for Cleaner EnginesAnd there are many ways to make transport more sustainable. Major players in the auto-motive industry are answering consumers’ calls to cut costs at the pump and make their cars greener – this innovative field is also an EIB priority. Among a number of manufacturers at the vanguard of this new approach to motoring in Europe is Renault. The French car manufacturer currently has four fully-electric models in its stable, and has cut average emissions across the full range by 50% over the past two decades.

Since 2009, the EIB has lent almost !1 bil-lion to Renault to co-finance their RDI pro-grams in electric cars, fuel efficient power trains and aerodynamics and has helped finance similar schemes for BMW, Volvo and Mercedes-Benz.

To forge a cleaner future, we must put together a multi-faceted approach to energy. Taking all aspects together, from production, through consumption and look-ing at innovative new ways to make both more sustainable, we are beginning to treat the planet with the respect it deserves.

Image (left): Gemasolar power plant, Spain.Source: Torresol Energy Investment S.A.

Image (right): Quito metro, Ecuador.Source: EIB

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Writer: Sally Lee is a student of rural development at the University of Humboldt.

Pig-Farming in the United States of America

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Exponential increases in demand for pork products worldwide has resulted in the construction of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and waste lagoons as means of industrializing production. A closer look at hog production of this kind in eastern North Carolina, USA, reveals that while profits are spiraling upward, the burdens of extreme environmental damage and health hazards are shouldered disproportionately by minority communities and the rural poor. Leaders of the Environmental Justice movement struggle to defend their communities and capture the attention of the general public.

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Heaps of HogsPeople love pigs, and pigs create waste. An increase in global demand for pork products has driven a trend of concentra-tion and industrialization in hog production worldwide, creating pockets of densely packed pig farms. Meanwhile, one hog can produce as much as four to eight times the feces as a human being. The combination of these factors leads to an environmental and human health crisis that now plagues many rural communities.

This is the story of the eastern coastal plain region of the state of North Carolina in the USA, which has become a hog-production haven. At 9 - 10 million strong, the popula-tion of the pig herd here outnumbers resi-dents; the flat, sandy landscape is speckled with “lagoons,” which are literally pools of hog waste the size of football fields. These lagoons have become emblems of the pain-ful decades-long fight for local residents, primarily African Americans and rural poor, to defend their communities from crippling air and water pollution.

As in much of the world today, hogs here are now raised in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). According to John Ikerd, an agricultural economist at the University of Missouri, the transition from traditional independent hog farms to industrial CAFOs can be summarized in three points: First, farmers today specialize in only one phase of production rather than

the whole process. For example, a farm may focus on breeding, or raising the piglets up to a moderate weight (40 lbs in the U.S.), or “finishing” which is when the animals are fattened to prepare for slaughter. Secondly, the industry is dominated now by “contract agriculture” – a model of production where a large corporation forms contracts with individual farmers to complete their single step in the production process according to exact standards. In this model, the com-pany owns the animals, not the farmer, and provides the exact type of feed and inputs (such as antibiotics or hormones), and also determines what housing conditions the animals should have. The farmers them-selves do not have much control over the standards of operation on their farm if they wish to keep their contract. The third major change is that independent farmers, largely as a result of consolidation in the industry, have almost disappeared as they have been forced out of business or bought out.

In the case of North Carolina, almost all the hogs produced here become part of the brand name Smithfield Foods. Up until 2013, Smithfield Foods was independently the largest hog producer and processor in the world. Last September, U.S. regulators allowed China’s Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd. to purchase Smithfield in the largest Chinese purchase of a U.S. firm in history. This tremendous financial transac-tion has shifted managerial focus of the

business practices even farther away from the daily operations on the ground in east-ern North Carolina.

The CAFOs here house hogs in tightly packed conditions, numbering in the thou-sands. Average facilities in North Carolina have as many as 80,000 hogs. According to a report by the Government Account-ability Office in 2008, this size facility can create 1.5 times the volume of waste as the City of Philadelphia. All this waste has to go somewhere. The cheapest and most popular form of waste management is the lagoon, which is a low-tech pool located right next to the hog houses where the waste is flushed. From these pools the waste is dispersed – using sprayers – over fields. In some areas (such as the mid-west of the U.S.) this sprayed waste is used as a fertilizer for crops. In North Carolina, the tendency is to spray waste on unused fields, usually containing Bermuda grass or left fallow. In other words, the waste is literally waste – and has not been reclaimed for a secondary purpose.

Lagoons produce a wide range of negative impacts on the environment in eastern North Carolina. Industry representatives maintain that when applied at recommended rates, spraying is safe. However, a 1995 study found that even at recommended rates, spraying can lead to excessive phosphorus, heavy metal and nitrogen build-up in soils and surface-

Image (previous page): Baby pig.Source: Scott Bauer / USDA / Flickr

Image (left): Aerial View of a Factory Farm.Whitetail Hog Facility in Missouri. 20 million gallon manure lagoons. Each group of eight barns is called a site; each site houses 8,832 hogs.Source: Socially Responsible Agricultural Project / Flickr

Image (next page): Factory Animal Production Impacts on North Carolina Waterways. Dead fish floating in North Carolina Estuary.Source: Waterkeeper Alliance Inc.

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water. This study demonstrated the impacts on local water systems of “safe” spraying levels, including algal blooms and fish kills.

The logic behind the development of the lagoon was that various particulates, micro-bial “gums” and sludge in the waste itself would cause a clogging of pores where the waste met the soil, and form a self-sealing barrier, preventing seepage or con-tamination of groundwater. However, soils in eastern North Carolina are sandy and the water table is high, a situation that easily lends itself to groundwater contamination. Concerns over lagoon seepage led the General Assembly of North Carolina to fund a broad survey of existing hog lagoons in the state in 1993, which found that 79% of those lagoons tested had “moderate” to “very high” contamination leaks, resulting in ecological damage, as well as groundwater containing nitrate levels that did not meet EPA standards for drinking water.

Eastern North Carolina is an area of rural

communities where many residents tra-ditionally have used shallow wells as their source of drinking water. The contamina-tion from lagoons therefore poses a serious problem. As activist and resident Gary Grant points out, “this is especially bad for the poor, because people end up having to buy bottled water, or go to the laundry mat instead of being able to wash their clothes at home.”

But the most dangerous problem is the level of toxicity of the contents of these lagoons that are leaking. These are not simply manure piles – the concentration of waste materials is so intense that these pits are in fact deadly. There are many documented incidents in the U.S. of workers dying from being overcome by fumes of the lagoons or falling in. In one dramatic incident in Michi-gan, a worker became overcome by fumes, his 15-year-old cousin tried to save him and was also overcome, and three more family members jumped in to try to save them – but all met the same fate, and died in the lagoon.

Because of the fecal contents and produc-tion methods in the hog houses, lagoons contain pathogens such as Salmonella and E. Coli, but also high levels of pharmaceu-ticals, antibiotics, hormones, antimicrobial agents, insecticides, heavy metals, high concentrations of ammonia and phos-phorus, and other compounds threatening to the regional watersheds and human health. When these toxins leak into a water body, such as one of the many regional rivers or streams, the waste consumes the oxygen, kills animals and vegetation, and replaces natural wildlife populations with algae and noxious black mud. In one of the largest spills in the past decade, an 8-acre hog lagoon ruptured and released 25.8 million gallons of waste into the

New River. To put this in perspective – that ranks as the largest environ-mental spill in the U.S., twice as big in volume as the 1989 Exxon-Valdez oil spill. The waste could not be extracted from the river and over the course of two months it made its way down river until it reached the ocean, killing over 4 million fish and

other marine creatures in its path. Accord-ing to local reports, the waste was so toxic it would burn your skin if you touched it.

Farmers are technically not allowed to spray excess waste out of the lagoons during storms, because of the increased threat to groundwater from run-off. How-ever, this places farmers in a catch-22 situation as during rain storms lagoon levels rise dangerously. Steve Wing, Pro-fessor of Epidemiology and researcher at the University of Chapel Hill North Caro-lina, has extensively studied the impacts of hog lagoon pollution on rural com-munities. “Community members report over-spraying,” he says, “What happens? Nothing. The growers are required to spray to maintain freeboard even when the fields are already saturated.”

To make matters worse, eastern North Carolina is located in what is known as “hurricane alley.” Tropical storms of all

[...] lagoons contain pathogens such as Salmonella and E. Coli, but also high levels of pharmaceuticals,

antibiotics, hormones, antimicrobial agents, insecticides, heavy metals, high concentrations of ammonia and

phosphorus, and other compounds threatening to the regional watersheds and human health.

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Amidst the strips of lagoons, hog houses, and one of the world’s densest pig popula-tions, eastern North Carolina is also home to the state’s historic African American communities. “They call this the Black Belt,” explains Gary Grant, life-long activist and resident of Halifax County. The 23 coun-ties that constitute the “Black Belt” were historically home to major slave plantations. After Emancipation, freed slaves continued to work as sharecroppers and developed long-standing and deep-rooted communi-ties, and a unique southern culture.

Gary Grant’s name is well known in this area. He is a progressive community activ-ist who has become a leader in defense of his community and others in this region. He is now the executive director of the internationally acclaimed Concerned Citi-zens of Tillery (CCT) organization, a small but mighty group has fought to defend their homes and farmlands from environ-mental injustice.

CCT has become a role model in the region because, despite their cultural endurance, these communities have faced continu-ous discrimination and racism. One such injustice Grant cites is the disproportionate placement of hog CAFOs and their hazards in or near African American communities. “It’s the area that the hog industry has invaded, and I do say invaded,” says Grant. “The cultural events and growth of these communities have been severely impacted by the CAFOs.”

Whether or not these sites were intention-ally placed here has been a subject of much debate. Some studies indicate that the industry is simply following the “path of less political resistance,” meaning plan-ning their construction for areas where residents are unlikely to object, do not have the political clout to fight the location of environmental hazards, and where land is cheap.01 Bob Edwards, professor of soci-ology at East Carolina University undertook

sizes hit this area every year, leading to regular flooding events. One of the most significant events occurred in 1999 when Hurricane Dennis hit the coast twice, bringing heavy rains and damag-ing winds, followed immediately by Hur-ricane Floyd which added another 20 inches of rain in a short period of time. The result was a flood that completely submerged hundreds of lagoons across the floodplain, mixing their toxic contents into the surging floodwaters. Many of the hog houses themselves were also

a study in 2000 to investigate this further. His work confirmed that, while the profit-ability of hog farming in North Carolina surged for the international stakeholders of the hog production companies, the politically marginalized and poor residents shoulder the bulk of the costs in terms of loss of land value, loss of quality of life, health risks and other burdens.

A social movement known as environmental justice was born out of this struggle in the 1980s, right here in North Carolina. Com-bining environmentalism and civil rights issues, and now reaching minority com-

submerged, which resulted in tens of thousands of drowned hogs – hundreds of which remained floating and washed up across the region. Beaches that the floodwaters reached were reportedly covered in a slime of hog waste.

Despite the degradation to the coast and waterways, the lagoons were patched-up and refilled, and business as usual contin-ues in eastern North Carolina, with thou-sands upon thousands of gallons of hog waste piling up.

Environmental in-Justice

while the profitability of hog farming

in North Carolina surged for the

international stakeholders of

the hog production companies,

the politically marginalized and

poor residents shoulder the bulk of

the costs in terms of loss of land value,

loss of quality of life, health risks and

other burdens.

Census data confirms the overlap between rural poverty, non-white communities and hog CAFO placement in eastern North Carolina.Source: Wing et al, 2001.

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munities around the world, the movement started in Warren County when a commu-nity of African Americans fought to prevent 120 million pounds of toxic PBC waste from being dumped in their neighborhood. The state government had selected their backyards as a site for a landfill for the toxic waste without the participation or consulta-tion of the community. Residents lay down on the road in front of the waste trucks, and attempted to file a lawsuit against the state. Though they lost the battle and the waste site was in fact established, the coverage of Warren County citizens brought Environ-mental Justice to the attention of the nation and spread the movement to other issues, including CAFOs.02

“Environmental Justice means every per-son has clean water, clean air, clean land to live on and no communities are targeted by the industry because they are “less than others”, says Grant.

Steve Wing, Professor of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, has conducted several studies on air pollution and the quality of life impacts experienced by residents in eastern North Carolina as a result of CAFO placement. His studies highlight physical health impacts,

including sore throat, respiratory difficulty, eye irritation and nausea, as well as mental health impacts such as anxiety, nervous-ness, and feeling stressed and annoyed. For one study, Wing and colleagues took a trailer of air-quality monitoring equip-ment to different communities located near CAFOs and measured hydrogen sulfide in the air. They asked community members to participate by sitting on their porches twice a day to fill in questionnaires about odors, mental health impacts and blood pressure. The results of the study indicated that hydrogen sulfide levels were strongly correlated with odor, and also with physical and mental difficulties.

As a result of these experiences, residents in this area tend to avoid the outdoors. This means leaving windows closed, avoiding sit-ting or eating outside. Grant explains, “I was driving from Rocky Mount the other day and saw a family with a house next to a CAFO outside about to have a cookout. I saw them

taking everything back in, and when I got closer I was overcome by the odor.”

Wing’s participants cited similar prob-lems, and also explained that they must keep their houses sealed tightly, that their clothes and hair hold the smell perma-nently, and cite examples of being over-whelmed by the odor occasionally when going outdoors – to walk to their car or check their mail. “If anyone wants to live near the stench, if anyone thinks ‘it’s just odor,’ tell them to come live in eastern North Carolina,” says Grant.

The impacts of living in hog country stretch beyond the household. As the number of hogs has increased, the number of farmers in North Carolina has dramati-cally decreased. Vertical integration and increasing farm size has pushed out small farmers, leaving many jobless in an area with relatively few options for employment. Smithfield Pork employs 5,000 people in

Smithfield Pork employs 5,000 people in its Tarheel processing plant, where a grand total of 36,000 hogs are slaughtered each day. [...] The

jobs are dangerous and low-paid.

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Politics and PigsAt this point, one may wonder why a state government would boast to be the friend-liest state toward industry in the face of extreme concentrations of hogs, waste, and the associated externalities developing in their own backyard. The shortest answer is: financial profit.

Industrial hog farming really began in North Carolina in 1970 when Wendell Murphy, a wealthy hog farm owner in his own right, was elected to the House of Representa-tives in North Carolina. He worked to pass a series of laws that eliminated sales taxes on hog farming equipment, and made it more difficult for local authorities in communities to use “zoning” regulations to deal with odor and pollution from hog operations.

This opened up the vast coastal plain of North Carolina to the hog industry. Lagoons, being the cheapest form of waste management, were implemented along with the explosion of hog houses across the state. In the 1990s, North Carolina’s hog industry became the second largest in the country, growing from 3.7 million to over 10 million in just 6 years, while the number of farms

dropped from over 11,400 in 1982 to about 2,200 in 2011. 03

In 1997 North Carolina state legislature put in place a two-year moratorium on the construction of new lagoons, hog houses, or facilities with over 250 pigs called the “Clean Water Responsibility Act,” which did noth-ing to improve the situation with the exist-ing lagoons on the 2,200 farms already in place. In 1999, following the devastation of Hurricane Floyd, the Smithfield Agreement was forged, which required the company to invest in research into Environmentally Superior Technologies (ESTs) for waste management, and required that Smithfield install these ESTs once developed on any company-owned farms.

This agreement was on the surface a good step, but in reality had little to no effect on the CAFOs for two reasons. First, the agree-ment maintained that to be installed, the EST must also be technically, operationally and economically feasible. While reason-able in and of itself, the agreement contin-ues to define economic feasibility of a new technology as a comparison on a 10-year basis of the EST costs as compared to the

costs of operating a lagoon. As has been demonstrated, lagoons have a large number of external impacts and costs, but lagoons are incredibly low-tech, require little equip-ment and are cheap to install, thus this defi-nition set up a predicament for the adoption of ESTs. The cheapest EST to date (called the Super Soils system) adds $7.13 per fin-ished pig to the costs of production over the lagoon system.

Secondly, the agreement only required the installation take place on “company-owned” farms. In fact, Smithfield owns very few farms but uses the contract agriculture model for the massive majority of its produc-tion. The result of these factors is that out of roughly 2,500 hog farms in North Carolina, only 11 to date have applied for an upgrade to an EST. In surveys with farmers in 2011, Duke University student Ashlyn Karan found that most hog farmers felt the lagoons were their only option, and were poorly informed of the dangers and environmental damage they posed. Their concerns about ESTs were mostly over initial investment and opera-tional costs, and almost none of the farmers polled felt they had a reason to transition to the more expensive system. 04

"The 10 highest density hog production counties in the nation are in eastern North

Carolina. Out of those, 3 also have the highest turkey production density in the country. The situation is getting worse in terms of CAFOs

and animal waste in this region." – Steve Wing

its Tarheel processing plant, where a grand total of 36,000 hogs are slaughtered each day. This is a fast moving, sharp and loud working environment. The jobs are danger-ous and low-paid. The internationally rec-ognized organization Human Rights Watch has twice issued reports against Smithfield for abuse of workers, and a variety of viola-tions are well documented in public records including unjust terminations, racial epithets, intimidation, assault and spying on workers. Workers were prevented twice by Smithfield from holding elections for union represen-tation, and in 2007 the company filed suit against the United Food and Commercial Workers union in what some say was an attempt to prevent eventual unionization of their employees. The parties settled in 2009.

Activists and community leaders like Grant have worked with non-profits to fight back against environmental in-justice, but with limited results. “Environmental Justice in North Carolina is being slapped in the face by the current legislature,” Grant says. “Many people in Europe and the rest of the world think that racism and prejudice is done with here, but it’s still here, it just takes on different forms.”

17

Looking to the FutureIndustry reports available online high-light the sustainability of their operations and the weight of their EST investments. Smithfield’s website points to their overall reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, water use and normalized waste. But if you ask Steve Wing about the changes, “it is exactly the same as it used to be,” he says. “The people most affected don’t have the political clout, and state and federal agen-cies that are supposed to regulate this are in the pocket of the industry.” Wing points to recent evidence of large donations to campaign funds, and to a recent proposal in the North Carolina Senate to make aerial photos of hog farms and GPS data about their locations off-limits to the general pub-lic as examples. “There is no political will to improve”, Wing claims.

Some efforts have been made recently to find creative solutions. Duke University has partnered with Google to convert Lloyd-Ray Farms into an experimental energy-gen-erating hog farm. They have developed a system to capture methane by covering the hog lagoon, generating burnable gas.

While this is a creative idea, it does not

In addition to a lack of incentives to tran-sition, some of the limitations put in place on lagoons have also eroded. Grant cites the moratorium that he and fellow activists fought to put in place in the 1990s as an example. Under new rules put out in 2010, if a lagoon breaks down, as long as it is rebuilt within 150 feet of the old one the new EST standards do not have to apply. “The life of a lagoon is 20 to 25 years,” notes Grant. “This means we can’t get rid of them.”

provide the whole solution. Karan’s inter-views with the owner of Lloyd-Ray Farms make a significant point. The farmer was only partially aware of the functioning of the technology being piloted on his farm, and said that he was only willing to par-ticipate because Duke assured him the costs would be covered. This points to a serious need for education and awareness raising amongst the hog farmers and the rural community members themselves about alternatives to lagoons and their potential values.

Others have raised concerns about the outcome of implementing a methane-gas system on top of the lagoon system. “It puts in place an incentive for Duke Univer-sity and others in the bio-gas world to keep the lagoon system in place,” Wing notes. The social impacts of the lagoon system may then be even harder to address.

Wing believes that sustainability for North Carolina means transitioning to a lower density, less environmentally damaging system, which he calls “rural autonomy.” In this system, “farmers own their land, they own their animals and their inputs, they own

their livelihoods and they have the power to have safe and liveable communities.”

This idea of autonomy, which is echoed by farmer advocacy groups across the south, is more than just a social justice issue: it is at the heart of the principles of the Environmental Justice movement and is possibly the keystone to the environmental solution for eastern North Carolina. “Rural autonomy means people who live in places that are currently polluted would have a say to protect their families and communities,” Wing says. Their ability to do so would result in regulations and practices that limit pollu-tion, protect the environment, the people and the pigs.

01. Mohai P, et al. Environmental justice. Annu Rev Environ Resour 34:405–430 (2009).

02. United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice – Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty 1987 – 2007.

03. Oleniacz, Laura. “Hog industry proud of environmental record.” New Bern, North Carolina, 2011.

04. Karan, Ashlyn. Pigs, Profit, Planet: North Carolina Farmer’s Perspectives on Waste Lagoon Conversion. December 2011

Image (p.15): Liquid manure pumped into lagoon in Lancaster County, PA.

Source: Chesapeake Bay Program / Flickr

Image (left): Buzzard on Deadbox at North Carolina Swine Facility - Feb 2014.

Source: Waterkeeper Alliance Inc. / Flickr

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What are the main challenges of the energy transition?

The consequences of global warm-ing are truly terrible. Although, in the long-run, I believe that the human race will survive these challenges and prosper. Mankind survived and

emerged renewed at the end of the last ice-age only around 10,000 years

ago. Now we face long-term direct eco-nomic loss (and all the rest) for short-term financial gain. However, we all want plea-surable lifestyles. We want good lives, we want warm (or cool) housing, we want fast reliable transport. These are the glories of globalization: cheap transport allows us to buy an inexpensive tablet “Made in China”, those Spanish oranges, or a Korean TV. The energy transition has been hijacked by pessimistic gloom merchants. A future world is portrayed as “small-cold-house”, “wear-a-sweater”, “walk-to-work”, “catch-the-bus”, “on-your-bike”, “buy-local”, “no-holiday-flights”. Much of the world is still energy-starved, adding to the energy needs of the developed world. The world’s poor aspire to better lifestyles too. Their needs grow. We need to find ways for everybody to have good lives while radically reducing green house gas emissions. We cannot deny anyone the right to a good-life.

What do we need to do?

We need to look very hard and very logi-cally at all the evidence and make our decisions based on the best data, not on our feelings. We must use energy much more efficiently and we must generate energy more cleanly. We must deploy our

best minds in all fields not just technol-ogy. There is no one energy sector that is completely dominant so we must work in all areas. Nearly half of our energy is con-sumed privately by transport and house-holds. The rest is used by industry. There are the low-hanging fruit of LED lighting and home insulation. We can also do a great deal with better energy management in our homes and buildings via IT manage-ment systems.

Industry, services and agriculture use roughly the other half of our energy. It is in the economic interest of any business to save costs to make larger profits. We must ensure that any greenhouse gas emitting industry pays the full cost; this includes the costs of climate change. The same goes for taxation of imported materials, such as steel or aluminium, so that foreign businesses are on the same green-house gas level playing field as those who pollute less. It is rather stupid to export the CO2 emissions and then pay and pollute to re-import the same materials. This is a hard task for our politicians to achieve but they need to find ways.

The problems of pollution, efficiency and noise from transport will be solved by switching to electrical transport. Maritime and air transport will also become electric! Modern electrical vehicles have fantastic performance and fantastic fuel efficiency. I’m not thinking of the cars we tend to see today, the dorky econoboxes, but those like Tesla Automotive. These will naturally replace today’s vehicles when the batter-ies are only a few times better than now. In reality, this transition is very close. One

Steve Laycock CEO of AELTARI

ProfileSteven Laycock is the founder and CEO of Aeltari International – one of the first companies to promote pho-tovoltaic power plants in the UK. He holds a PhD in Astrophysics from Cambridge University and graduat-ed from the Solvay Business School MBA in 2000. He led the develop-ment of IBA’s first Protontherapy $20 million system for Harvard University’s teaching hospital where he gained notoriety for building a new particle accelerator with unprecedented per-formance in record time.

For more info:www.aeltari.com

1919

German company, e-volo, already promotes an electric personal helicopter!

After energy efficiency, we need clean energy production. We can do a great deal with renewable energies. Solar has the ability to provide local power which pro-vides savings on power line infrastructure and related losses in energy transport. It could well be that, at least for the domes-tic energy market, storing energy in our electrical vehicle batteries will make a huge contribution. However, for the large quantities of stable energy we will need reliability, both for our homes and industry, and at reasonable costs, so we must use our nuclear technology. We must weigh objectively the terrible risks from green-house gas emissions and global warming against the well-studied and really lower risks of nuclear power. We should work hard on the next generation of cleaner and safer thorium reactors to replace uranium fuelled rectors.

How can funding of green projects be made easier?

When new technologies, such as large-scale solar and wind, were to be quickly rolled out it was necessary to provide some-what generous subsidies. Money attracts effort; effort makes more and better equip-ment; and better equipment is more effi-cient and less expensive to produce. More leads to huge economies of scale. Prices per unity energy are driven down over time and subsidies can be reduced. Adding in the financial crisis, subsidies were reduced in poor ways. Some national governments even decided to tax previously installed power plants.

To raise finance at the lowest possible cost, risk must be minimized. Governments that have unexpectedly added taxes and cut promised subsidies seriously increases project risk. This risk either means that the green project developer cannot raise the money, or can only raise the money at a very

high interest rate. Many of the projects only show profit after a decade or more. This is why Aeltari would never consider develop-ing PV projects in the UK again because we were badly burned. Stability and predict-ability of regulation and subsidies are key.

Can crowd-funding be a solution?

Crowd-funding of green projects is a use-ful new tool. We find that there are many good projects out there which are unable to raise funds from traditional sources. There are also very many people who have spare cash but do not know where to invest it. Banks historically gave reasonable interest rates at low risks. Nowadays, saving inter-est rates are too low compared to infla-tion. Crowd-funding lets these individuals invest where all project details are exposed transparently. The ability of individuals to find and invest in projects, cutting out the middle-man, means the process can be far more efficient. We are still in the early days – stay tuned.

20

Europe Needs More GridsThey need to be reliable, affordable and publicly acceptable.

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The integration of the European energy market is critical for a cost effective implementation of the 2030 climate and energy framework. The upgrading and expanding of Europe’s electricity distribution and transmission networks is a fundamental and critical step towards reaching this objective.

Writer: Marcello Del Brenna, Member Europacable Executive Board

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1. Security of supply through state-of-the-art technology Security of electricity supply is one of the predominant needs of our society and demand for reliable power supply will continue to increase. When upgrading and expanding Europe’s electricity net-works, security of supply shall be a key priority in the design and construction of new electrical infrastructure. Already today, high-tech and quality underground and subsea power transmission cables are state-of-the-art, playing an impor-tant role in the European transmission and distribution network. Designed and constructed to meet strict international standards, they provide highly reliable energy transmission in the European grid systems and will become an increasingly important component of Europe’s future transmission and distribution networks.

2. Compensating investment costs by societal benefits

Electricity price is one of the key fac-tors determining competitiveness in the global market. Upgrading and expanding Europe’s electricity networks shall be a tool to improve Europe’s competive-ness by increasing competition in the electricity market and eventually reduc-ing electricity prices. Nowadays offshore wind projects cannot be operated due to a lack of access to the transmission grid; the internal market is not function-ing in an optimal way due to the lack of interconnection capacity resulting in local markets, sub-optimal generation mix and therefore a higher cost of electricity.

Upgrading and expanding Europe’s elec-tricity infrastructures will generate con-siderable socio-economic benefits which will outweigh the initial investment costs.

3. Gaining public acceptance through the concept of par-tial undergrounding

With more than 50,000 km of new high and extra high power transmission lines needed in Europe in the coming decades, more and more communities will be directly affected by new trans-mission projects. While the vast majority of these lines will continue being con-structed with overhead line technology, partial undergrounding can complement them in sensitive areas, increasing pub-lic acceptance, therefore minimizing permitting and construction delays. Ulti-mately this will contribute to the timely development of critical infrastructure for the future of Europe.

Europacable believes that there are three key challenges to be addressed. All of them shall be overcome.

The Concept of Partial Undergrounding can be applied at any voltage level. Euro-pacable believes that today the biggest potential to facilitate grid extensions lies

with 380 kV extra high voltage (EHV) cross linked polyethylene (XLPE) alternate cur-rent (AC) cables. Individual sections of up to 20 km can go underground. Beyond

Europacable developed the Concept of Partial Undergrounding to offer an innovative solution to the challenge of upgrading and expanding Europe’s electricity grid in a reliable, affordable and publicly acceptable way.

The idea is to underground extra high voltage power lines in sensitive areas complementing overhead lines where their installation raises public or environmental concerns.

that, and depending on the system con-figuration, compensation may need to be accounted for. It is technically feasible to underground several 20 km sections. Partial undergrounding can also be applied to extra high voltage DC projects. Here the minimum length of an undergrounded section would be at least 50 km.

An increasing number of reference cases show that partial undergrounding of EHV transmission lines can help to address concerns of local communes affected by the impacts of transmission lines. Partial undergrounding can break the deadlock of transmission projects, some of which have been delayed by more than ten years.

By reducing permitting times of transmission projects, partial undergrounding can serve as an enabler to integrate renewable energy sources into Europe’s future energy mix.

The Concept of Partial UndergroundingWriter: Volker Wendt, Director Public Affairs Europacable

Image (p20-21): Installation of high voltage overhead lines. Source: TenneT

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TODAY’S OPPORTUNITIES, TOMORROW’S POSSIBILITIESLINKING THE FUTURE

APPLYING OUR EXPERIENCE TODAY’S OPPORTUNITIES, TOMORROW’S POSSIBILITIESSUPPORTING THE WORLD’S INFRASTRUCTUREAPPLYING OUR EXPERIENCE TODAY’S OPPORTUNITIES, TOMORROW’S POSSIBILITIES DRIVING INNOVATION SUPPORTING THE GLOBAL ENERGY AND TELECOMS INFRASTRUCTURES

CLOSE PROXIMITYLINKING THE FUTURE ENHANCING CUSTOMER PERFORMANCE

APPLYING OUR EXPERIENCETODAY’S OPPORTUNITIES, TOMORROW’S POSSIBILITIES

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20567_Prysmian_Group_Energy Ad_A4_v4.indd 1 29/11/2012 14:05

comprise 3-4 cable systems, for example 9-12 cables requiring a total width of some 20 meters (see Figure 2).

considerable impact on the environment, vegetation will be re-installed after 1-2 years. There are no limitations to farming or agriculture on top of the cable trench apart from deep-rooted trees.

after installation in the ground according to international standards. Once in the ground, they are well-protected against any adverse weather conditions, hence offering reliable electricity transmission.

Key aspects of installing 380 kV XLPE ca bles in partially undergrounded sections:

buried in the ground. Cables will be installed at a depth of around 1.60 meters. Thermal backfill material will be deployed around the cable. Above that the original soil will be refilled (see Figure 1).

the weight and size of cable drums, cables are usually delivered in lengths up to 1,000 meters. Individual cables are connected by so-called “joints” which are typically also buried directly in the ground. Joints can be installed in “joint bays” which are not visible above ground.

-ted, 380 kV cable sections would usually

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Following an invitation of the European Commission DG Energy, Europacable and ENTSO-E published a Joint Paper outlining the feasibility and technical aspects of partial undergrounding of Extra High Voltage (EHV) power transmission lines (AC 220 - 400 kV) in January 2011.

The Joint Paper confirms that “partial undergrounding may, in some cases, be part of a solution of transmission projects of vital interest for the development of the EU transmission network”, and stresses that: “Given the complexity of integrating partial undergrounding into high voltage transmission systems, all projects will require a case-by-case analysis of the technical specifications required for partial undergrounding.”

380 kV AC Cable Installation in Partial Undergrounding Solutions

Image (left): Installation of 380 kV cable in Randstad Project.Source: TenneT

Image (next page): Prelaying of pipes before 380 kV cable pulling.Source: TenneT

Figure 1: Example of a single AC 400 kV system carrying 1,250 MVA. (space depends on soil resistivity)Source: Europacable ENTSO-E Joint Paper, 2011

Figure 2: Example of two double AC 400 kV circuits carrying 5,000 MVASource: Europacable ENTSO-E Joint Paper, 2011

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been achieved. Most recent projects have reached voltages of ±320 kV with a capac-ity of 800-1,000 MW. This trend will con-tinue in the years to come.

With switchgear technology becoming available, meshed HVDC networks will be gradually introduced, and Europe will see

the creation of an additional HVDC overlay network. With current networks operating in AC, any DC connection needs to be con-verted back into AC. The required converter technology is fully available today and will certainly see further evolution in the future.

High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) cable installations have seen a significant increase over the past years. HV XLPE DC cables will be a key technology moving into the future.

They allow for long distance, point-to-point transmission of high power: lower power connections are in use to connect islands to mainland or feed offshore platforms; and more powerful connections are used for interconnection and connection of offshore wind generation. Over recent years, a con-tinuous increase in transmittable power has

High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC)Carrying High Power Over Long DistancesWriter: Ernesto Zaccone, Chairman Europacable High Voltage Systems Group

Increase of XLPE DC power ratings :Source: Europacable

Increase of HVDC cables :Source: Europacable

Year

Cab

le le

ngth

(km

)

Extruded submarine Extruded land

Paper submarine Paper land

Pow

er p

er b

ipol

e M

W

Year

1950-60 1961-70 1971-80 1981-90 1991-2000 2001-10 2011-17

2,500

2,000

1,500

1,000

500

0

Minimum

MaximumAverage

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HVDC power transmission on land can be reliably installed either as overhead line

or as an underground cable. HVDC mass-impregnated underground cables have a long operational track record of over 40 years and are a proven and reliable transmission component. HVDC XLPE AC underground cable technology has been in service in voltages up to ± 200 kV since 2002. Europacable expects XLPE to be the key DC cable technology of the future with voltages up to ± 550 kV.

In principle the installation of HVDC XLPE underground cables is similar to that of XLPE underground cables, yet the environ- mental footprint is smaller as less cables are required. This allows for comparatively narrower trenches.

High Voltage DC subsea cable systems are a key technology for the development of future European electricity transmission networks. They serve two functions:

1. to interconnect countries or islands separated by sea

2. to connect remote offshore platforms to main transmission grids

For interconnections today, HVDC subsea transmission technology is largely applied in single point-to-point connections. Among the latest best practices in Europe is the Western Link UK, connecting Scotland to England via a 425 km submarine cable link deploying a

bi-pole with two mass-impregnated cables of ± 600 kV for the transmission of 2,200 MW. The Western Link UK will be the most pow-erful HVDC connection ever realized with a maximum water depth of 350 meters. Looking into the future, meshed HVDC sub-sea systems will become available, thereby interconnecting remote parts of the European Union to one single electricity network.

In addition to serving as an interconnec-tor, HVDC subsea cable systems can also connect offshore substations on platforms to mainland grids. Offshore platforms can export electricity generated from one or sev-eral offshore wind parks to land or they can serve as a power distribution hub for offshore oil and gas operations. Current best practices

include the Borwin 2 Project, a large scale offshore wind installation in the North Sea located some 120 km north of the German coast. When completed, two XLPE DC cables ± 300 kV 800 MW will connect the Borwin beta platform to the transmission grid over a distance of 75 km.

The installation of HVDC XLPE subsea cable systems is a considerable challenge: the maritime environment adds a significant complexity to the cable installation, opera-tion and maintenances. Installation vessels and submarine robots are at the center of the installation operation. Depending on the cable weight and diameter, typically up to 100 km cable length can be carried on a rotating turntable on the laying ship.

HVDC Subsea Cables

HVDC Underground Cables

Europe’s wire and cable industry is a global technology leader provi ding state-of-the-art energy, data- and telecommunication cables. Europacable member companies comprise both large multinationals as well as highly-specialized small- and medium-sized cable manufactures.www.europacable.com

Special Industry Report A Revolve publication in association with Europacable about how cables are increasingly going underground and contributing to the integration of the european energy market.

Access the full report: www.revolve-magazine.com

Figure 3: HVDC XLPE underground cables: 2 Bipole, 320 kV, 2 GW Source: Europacable Introduction to HVDC underground cables, 2011

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28

Hydrogen Fuel of the FutureWriter: Yasmin Galbraith is an independant contributor to Revolve.

The idea of hydrogen as a source of energy to heat our homes and power our cars may be relatively new and perhaps unfamiliar to many, but hydrogen fuel cells actually predate the internal combustion engine and can provide an answer to confronting our global climate challenge, writes Yasmin Galbraith.

Image: Skylab Solar Flare.Source: Wikipedia

“Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.

It makes up 75 percent of the mass of the universe and 90 percent of its molecules.

Effectively harnessing it as a source of power would provide humanity with a virtually unlimited source of energy – the kind of energy that has long eluded alchemists

and chemists alike.”Jeremy Rifkin, The Hydrogen

Economy, 2003

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Hydrogen has been exploited for decades in industrial sectors such as in ammonia pro-duction, glass manufacturing and metal pro-duction. Making the move from industrial-scale usage to a fuel-for-power generation or transport has been challenging. But, in the past few years, after a period of relative stagnation, scientists and politicians have begun recognizing hydrogen as a potentially infinitely renewable and pollution-free fuel.

Hydrogen could be the answer to our great energy and water challenges today. As the most abundant element in our universe, which lessens the chance of consumers completely depleting the supply, hydrogen has the added value of being clean-burning and emission-free. The only by-products of hydrogen power are water and heat, which can both be recycled. This essentially transforms an energy-consuming process

into an energy-producing one. Car manu-facturers have been taking innovative leaps forward for years by developing hydrogen fuel cell powered cars that are just now becoming affordable.

Hydrogen gas is not just floating around: it is a part of most com-pounds, such as water, that what makes it so abundant on Earth.

Hydrogen-powered cars would have all the advantages of a conventional vehicle, such as being able to drive long distances, plus the ecological advantages of an electrical car. In addition to transport, hydrogen can also be used to store renewable energy from intermittent sources – for example, when the wind is blowing but demand is not high for electricity, or vice versa, when there is demand but the wind is not blow-ing, hydrogen storage capacity can provide

electricity. In this context, it’s an alternative to large-scale batteries or pumped storage hydro-power. Another possibility is to use hydrogen as a heating fuel for buildings, either combined with natural gas or on its own.

Hydrogen fuel cells powered the Apollo spacecraft that took us to the moon, so why is it taking so long to make the move into eve-ryday use?

Although abundant throughout our solar system and beyond, hydrogen is not avail-able in its pure form on Earth. It remains locked up in enormous quantities in water, hydrocarbons that make up fossil fuels and other organic matter. It’s therefore necessary to extract hydrogen before we can use it as a fuel. The most common ways of extracting hydrogen, such as splitting up hydrocarbon chains in fossil fuels, are unfortunately very polluting and environmentally damaging themselves: in fact, 95% of hydrogen is generated from fossil fuels in a carbon intensive process. This presents one of the two major hur-dles to overcome. The second obstacle is that potential energy producers and dis-tributors need the infrastructure to supply the demand for hydrogen, such as fueling stations for hydrogen-powered vehicles, and demand cannot really exist without the infrastructure in place to support it. This chicken-and-egg dilemma is stand-ing in the way of hydrogen-power vehicles being brought into the mainstream.

HY5Despite all the setbacks, there are promising strides being made towards the hydrogen economy, or at least to having more hydrogen in the economy, such as occurred in April 2014 when the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, made public a new pan-European initiative costing !38.4 million that aims to make hydrogen fuel cells a viable alternative to both fossil fuel-powered cars and plug-in electric vehicles across some of Europe’s leading cities. This scheme – dubbed ‘HyFive’ – has the support of five major car manufactures and will be the larg-est project of its kind in Europe. The plan is to roll-out the initiative in two stages: the first will be an extension of hydrogen fuel suppliers refueling network by identifying new sites and building refueling sta-tions in London, Aarhus, Odense and Innsbruck; after this is com-pleted, car manufactures are due to step in and start selling their hydrogen-powered vehicles in these countries. The ambition: to have the hydrogen cars on the road in 2015. Toyota, one of the car manufacturers involved in the project, will be the first to create a mass produced fuel-cell car.

The ambition: to have the hydrogen cars on the

road in 2015.

“Hydrogen is the lightest and most immaterial of all forms of energy and

the most efficient when burned.” Jeremy Rifkin, The Hydrogen

Economy, 2003, p.179

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Hosted by

Organised by

Save the date for the 8th edition of the World Future Energy Summit, the world’s foremost annual event dedicated to advancing future energy, energy efficiency and clean technologies from January 19-22, 2015, at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC), part of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week hosted by Masdar.

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End of an EraHydrogen is non-toxic, non-polluting and environmentally benign. Approximately 10-11 million metric tons of hydrogen are produced in the United States each year; this is enough to power 20-30 million cars or 5-8 million homes. Hydrogen gas is also known for being extremely flammable, and is used as a fuel by space shuttle main engines and was associated with the famous explosion of the Hindenburg blimp in 1937, although NASA scientists believe that the tragedy was caused by the highly flammable materials used to waterproof the skin and that hydrogen was not the initial cause of the fire – whatever the cause, the incident shattered public confidence in the giant, passenger-carrying airship and marked the end of the blimp era.

The concept of a ‘hydrogen economy’ has been widely explored by academics, sci-entists and politicians since the 1970s; it refers to the vision of an energy economy moving away from non-renewable sources towards a system of delivering energy through hydrogen. In an influential book by Jeremy Rifkin called The Hydrogen Economy (2003), the future of energy lies in hydrogen-powered fuel cells, with tech-nology advanced and accessible enough for everyone to be their own producer and consumer of energy, with the fuel cells being linked together in a larger hydrogen energy network. This would revolutionize our energy systems in the same way the Internet revolutionized communication.

This utopian prediction was made over a decade ago and remains a distant reality for our energy systems today, but there are ways to overcome the barriers to a hydrogen-pow-ered future. It is possible to produce hydro-gen through less carbon-intensive methods, for example water electrolysis could be a way of obtaining ‘green hydrogen’ and sup-porting the renewable energy markets.

Water electrolysis is the opposite of what goes on in a fuel cell – a water molecule is split by electricity into oxygen and hydrogen, and although the technological and economic aspects need to be straightened out, this could quickly become the preferred method for storing power from renewable energy in the form of hydrogen. Additionally, industries like the chlorine and petrochemicals gener-ate large quantities of unwanted hydrogen as a by-product at their plants. This is usually sold on and mixed with natural gas, but it’s worth exploring the potential of purifying the by-product hydrogen to be used outside the plant as a clean source of energy.

Hydrogen is a dense and bulky gas which creates an issue for transportation. The current infrastructure for gasoline and die-sel would have to be radically adapted to fit the needs of hydrogen transportation. Compressing the gas is an option, but the process requires energy, and compressed hydrogen contains far less energy than the same volume of gasoline. Despite these problems and the lack of a standardized method of transportation, some solutions

Phosphate Connection:95% of hydrogen in the world’s cur-rent economy (60 million T/year) comes from hydrocarbon reform-ing. As 1/2 of the world’s hydrogen is used for petro-cracking (upgrad-ing fuels in refineries) where the hydrocarbon feedstock exists to extract hydrogen releasing carbon in the atmosphere, the other half of the world’s hydrogen is used for ammonia synthesis. Since ammonia is used for the production of fertiliz-ers whose industry is located where phosphates deposits are, a tremen-dous opportunity arises for decou-pling the production of hydrogen and fertilizers from hydrocarbons. A renewable hydrogen transition may start right there and could be based on the processing of 75% of the world’s phosphate reserves, utiliz-ing one of the earth’s largest wind resources - the trade winds from the Atlantic Ocean, blowing across the Sahara Desert.Writer: Khalid Benhamou

Image: Hydenburg burning.Source: Wikipedia

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to the problem are emerging. For example, hydrogen can be stored as a solid in a chemical called sodium borohydride. Cre-ated from borax, this chemical releases hydrogen and transforms back into borax – meaning that it can be recycled. A stan-dardized method for hydrogen transport is essential for relevant infrastructure to develop. ENERGY OUT

HYDROGEN

H+

e-e-

OXYGEN

SCHEME OF A HYDROGEN FUEL CELL

AN

OD

E

ELEC

RO

LYTE

CAT

HO

DE

H2 2H+ + 2e- O2 + 4H+ + 4e- 2H2O

Image: Solar flare explosion.Source: Wikipedia

The Hydrogen PolicyThe current EU policy framework does not hinder hydrogen development, but it does not strongly encourage it either. To speed up the development of hydrogen-powered technologies, the EU has joined forces with European industry and research institutes to create the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen (FCH) Joint Technology Initiative (JTI). Together, they are in the process of implementing a program of research and technological develop-ment to accelerate the commercialization of hydrogen as a fuel source across many different applications.

Since 1986, the EU has funded 200 projects on hydrogen and fuel-cell energy technologies with a total contribution of over !550 million. For example, HyFleet: CUTE is an EU-funded project that unites 31 partners from industry, government, academia and con-sultancies with the aims of seeing the 47 hydrogen-powered buses integrated into the regular public transport systems in 10 different cities across 3 continents.

Most of the policies affecting hydrogen power fall under the wider framework of EU energy policy which aims to diversify and secure energy sources while reducing carbon emissions, and recognizes that hydrogen is a key element in this vision. However, the large-scale market development of hydrogen and fuel cells will require support from a new policy approach that is more technologically specific and open to innovative solutions.

A standardized method for hydrogen transport is essential for relevant infrastructure

to begin to develop.

The European Investment Bank partly financed the expansion of the Hellisheidi geothermal plant in the south-west of Iceland. In Europe, geothermal energy is used primarily in Italy and Iceland. According to ECOHZ, they have a combined excess of 1,400 MW of installed production capacity.

Source: Gunnar Svanberg Skúlason / EIB

Installation of a concentrated solar power pilot plant in Bad Aibling in southern Germany. Designed for small to medium applications from 1-20 MW, these CSP plants close the gap between large plants (+50 MW) and very small plants (up to 100 KW). Source: Maximilan Mutzhas, Protarget AG / ESTELA

Experienced service technicians and intelligent maintenance strategies help maintain reliable wind turbine output throughout the entire estimated life-span of up to 25 years for a windmill. In the Gunfleet Sands III in South East England, Siemens installed two 6 MW offshore wind test turbines in spring 2013. Source: Myrzik & Jarisch, Siemens AG

A rotor being lifted to the nacelle on the top of the pylon. The length of the nacelle is about 15 meters and its diameter is 6.5 meters. 11,159 MW of wind power capacity (worth between 13-18 billion euros) was installed in the EU-28 during 2013, according to the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA). Source: Siemens AG

Cables connect offshore wind farms to onshore electricity grids and are increasingly used for subsea and underground transmission of energy. These are High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) cables being prepared for turntable deployment at the Meerwind loadout warehouse in Hartlepool, UK. Source: Steve Morgan

Photovoltaic solar systems use semiconductor materials to convert light directly into electricity, using panels from a 1 MW solar module in Totana, Spain. Source: Morten Brakestad / ABB

Connecting the offshore turbines in the North Sea with onshore electricity networks, this shows the pull-in high voltage export cable from the C-Power wind farm in Bredene, Belgium. Source: Tom D’Haenens / C-Power N.V.

Ocean power energy about to be installed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Santander, Spain. IBERDROLA is Spain’s leading energy group and has achieved a total installed capacity of 45,000 MW and supplies 211,000 GWh a year to around 100 million people around the world. This has meant investments of 80.353 billion euros from 2001 to 2013. Source: IBERDROLA

A worker inspects Aquamarine Powers next-generation Oyster 800 at Burntisland Fabrications (BiFab) yard in Methil, Fife where the 800kW flap has been built. The Oyster will then be transported by sea from the Firth of Forth to the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney for installation. July 2011. Source: Aquamarine Power

At the Aqua Park of the “Grand SPA Lietuva” (a 20,000 m2 wellness complex), in Druskininkai, Lithuania, 10 heat pump units provide heating for the swimming pool and domestic hot water with a total capacity of 310 kW. Source: Alpha-InnoTec AG

Lifting the world’s first BioDME advanced biofuels process plant units into place in May 2010 in Sweden. Biofuels comprise a controversial but officially renewable source of energy. The transition to greater use of biofuels for transport in particular would in effect wean us off the darker fossil fuels we depend upon. Source: Markus Tiburzi / Chemrec

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Revolve is proud to present its 2014 sequel photo exhibition highlighting the human dimension of renewable energies and energy efficiency around Europe and beyond.

Visualizing Energy is about encouraging the energy transition by bringing together the industries, companies, and people that are shaping a more sustainable future.

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52

In the picturesque lands of Patagonia in the southern tip of South America, two research groups from Sapienza, Rome, Italy and from Buenos Aires University have been breaking new ground in analyzing mollusks to evaluate the baseline metal contamination in marine ecosystems. The famous Beagle Channel can be considered, apart from cadmium, a reference ecosystem for marine areas around the world.

Writers: Marcelo Enrique Conti, Raffaele Ciasullo and Mabel Beatriz Tudino are professors at the Department of Management, Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy, and University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, respectively.

PATAGONIABio-Monitoring the Environment

53

IntroductionTo evaluate the degree of contamination in an ecosystem it is necessary to first establish the background level of the contaminant, both in the environment (air, water, soil), and in the organism. The use of cosmopolite organisms to assess pol-lution has developed remarkably during the last decades. Such organisms accu-mulate contaminants from the environ-ment and can be used as bio-monitors to measure contamination in different geographical areas.

Traditional monitoring methods have some shortcomings: considerably high costs, methodological problems, the release of contaminants on an intermit-tent basis, effects on biological species, and numerous and extensive samplings. Bio-indicators are organisms that can be used for the qualitative determination of human-generated environmental factors while bio-monitors are organisms used for the quantitative determination of con-taminants and can be classified as being sensitive or accumulative.

Sensitive bio-monitors are used as preven-tive alarm systems. They can be of the opti-cal type and are used as integrators of the stress caused by contaminants (morphologi-cal changes in abundance or, for instance, photosynthetic or respiratory activities). Accumulative bio-indicators have the abil-ity to store contaminants in their tissues and are used to measure the concentration of such contaminants in the environment. Bio-accumulation is the result of equilibrium process of biota compound intake/discharge from and into the surrounding environment.

Bio-accumulators must:

1. accumulate the pollutant without being killed

2. have a wide geographical distribution

3. be abundant, sedentary, and representative of the collection area

4. be available all year round and allow for the collection of sufficient tissues for analysis

5. be easy to collect and resistant to laboratory conditions, as well as

being usable in laboratory studies of contaminant absorption

6. have a high concentration factor for the contaminant under study, and thus allow direct analysis with no prior increase in concentration

7. have a simple correlation between the quality of contaminant contained in the organism and the average contaminant concentration in the surrounding environment

8. have the same contaminant content level correlation with the surrounding environment in every site studied and under any condition, for all organisms examined

It is fundamental to define the reference levels for pollutants in an ecosystem when making biological monitoring stud-ies to evaluate the state of conservation or degradation, predict the incidence of possible future human activities in order to establish the necessary interventions, and to control evolution over time, using monitoring programs.

Image (p.52): Ushuaia. Source: Marcelo E. Conti

Image (p.53): Wildlife and Sights in the Beagle Channel. Source: Matt S. / Flickr

Image (next page): Beagle Channel, Argentina - Wildlife and Scenery. Source: Matt S. / Flickr

Mollusks are often used as bio-monitors for trace metal pollution in seawater

Case Study: Tierra del FuegoBiological monitoring methods lead to a remarkable reduction in time and costs if compared with direct analysis in water, mainly because the amounts of metals to be measured are larger and could escape from the more complex ultra-trace analysis domain. Additionally, the chemical analysis of mollusk organism tissues provides evi-dence of the integrated bio-availability of trace metals in the marine environment over time. They respond only to the seawater fraction presenting a clear eco-toxicological relevance. Mollusks have all the requisites and are therefore often used as bio-moni-tors for trace metal pollution in seawater.

Recent studies on gastropod mollusks from the Mediterranean have contributed to a bet-ter knowledge on elemental accumulation of these species and have permitted to evaluate probable human health risks derived from their consumption. Even though the amounts of accumulated chemical species revealed themselves as harmless for human ingest, they constitute an index of human exposure as these mollusks (patellid limpets) are usual indigenous food for the habitants.

These studies were conducted in coop-eration with the Department of Analytical Chemistry (INQUIMAE) of the University of

Rural areas and agriculture are facing a major transition process in the EU and abroad. The University of Pisa will host in Sillico (Lucca Province) a four week course comprising theoretical classes as well as !eld work in Tuscany (IT) to explore the changing role of rural areas.

This Summer Revolve magazine will join the Summer School “Exploring Innovation for Rural Transition” o"ered as part of the International MSc in Rural Development IMRD - EU Atlantis in the framework of Erasmus Mundus Program.

Find out more in the Fall issue!

SUMMER SCHOOL June 29 - July 25

Exploring Innovation for Rural Transition

For more information: Program coordinator - Prof. Francesco di Iacovo tel. +39 050 2216918 - email. francesco.diiacovo@unipi.itInternational cooperation - Dr. Paola Scarpellini tel. +39 050 2212272 - email. paola.scarpellini@unipi.it

55

in the diet; and (e) to compare the median baseline metal levels in the Beagle Channel with the marine baseline metal levels in the Tyrrhenian Sea (Italy) by using the patellid limpet N. magellanica as a bio-monitor.

The Beagle Channel is a strait in Tierra del Fuego, near the southern tip of South Amer-ica. The channel has high ecological rele-vance and is about 240 km long and between 5-14 km wide, separating Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego from several smaller island in the south. It owes its name to the British ship Beagle, employed by Charles Darwin to explore the area in 1833-34. The main urban settlement in Tierra del Fuego is the city of Ushuaia that is southernmost city of the world with some 60,000 inhabitants. Ushuaia is the most important port for Antarctic tourism and maritime traffic.

Tierra del Fuego has a unique ecosystem characterized by a wide range of wildlife and biodiversity. The authors selected seven sites

Buenos Aires, the authors conducted stud-ies on the baseline trace metal levels in organisms and seawaters in the supposedly uncontaminated area of the Beagle Channel with the aim of establishing useful baseline reference levels for making comparisons with other reference sites in the world.

The bivalve Mytilus chilensis is prevalent in the Beagle Channel, the Magellan Strait and South American seas, and is a popular food in these areas, as is the limpet Nacella (Pati-nigera) magellanica. These mollusks were selected to fulfil the objectives of the stud-ies: (a) to evaluate M. chilensis and Nacella (Patinigera) magellanica as bio-monitors of cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb) and zinc (Zn) in the Beagle Channel; (b) to search for strategic points in the Beagle Channel to provide back-ground contamination levels; (c) to analyze the evolution of contamination over time; (d) to infer the daily intake of heavy metals through the consumption of these mollusks

along the 170 km of coast. With the excep-tion of the Ushuaia Harbor, the six remaining sampling sites were carefully selected as examples of supposedly unpolluted areas along the Beagle Channel. Mollusks (M. chilensis and N. magellanica) were collected in two sampling campaigns in September 2005 and September 2007. Both campaigns respected the same geographical locations.

- Individuals of M. chilensis (n=280) were collected in tidal zone at the same depth and distance from the shoreline, and then put in contact (t=24h) with filtered seawater for depuration purposes.

- Individuals of N. magellanica (n=175) were collected in the tidal zone at the same depth and distance from shoreline in 2005 (n=105) and 2007 (n=70) sampling campaigns, and separated in muscle and viscera.

(All individual samples were placed in poly-ethylene bags, ice deep frozen and trans-ported to the laboratory.)

56

Analysis ResultsThe mean metal levels obtained for M. chilensis (seven sites) in the two sampling campaigns (2005 and 2007) were (µg g-1 dry weight ± SD): Cd: 0.75±0.48; Cr: 0.45±0.29; Cu: 6.14±2.04; Ni: 0.92±0.350; Pb: 0.42±0.36; Zn: 83.2±50.8.

The mean levels obtained for Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn in the Beagle Chan-nel for M. chilensis were clearly lower than those of the Tyrrhenian areas. Surprisingly, Cd levels were higher in M. chilensis if compared with those obtained for M. galloprovincialis from Tyrrhenian areas. However, Cd levels in bivalve mussels from the Beagle Channel resulted to be lower than those of other more contaminated areas such as the Moroccan Coast, the Mar-mara Sea or the Black Sea. The higher mean level of Cd in mollusks of the Beagle Channel could be explained by a higher bioavailability which yields higher accumulation. In general, the levels detected in M. chilensis in the Beagle Channel rank quite low (with the exception of Cd) compared to M. galloprovincialis samples arising from other low-medium contaminated and evidently contaminated areas in the world.

The mean metal levels obtained for N. magellanica muscle samples (n=175) in the two sampling campaigns were (µg g-1 dry weight ± SD): Cd: 3.97±2.45; Cr: 0.20±0.28; Cu: < 4.00; Ni: < 0.30; Pb: 0.13±0.16; Zn: 30.7±5.9; and the mean metal levels obtained for N. magellanica viscera samples (n=175) in the two sampling campaigns (2005 and 2007) were (µg g-1 dry weight ± SD): Cd: 8.22±4.01; Cr: 3.16±2.29; Cu: 15.16±8.45; Ni: 7.63±4.07; Pb: 1.23±1.57; Zn: 96.2±25.4.

Image: Ushuaia. Source: Marcelo E. Conti.

These results show higher metal bioac-cumulation levels in viscera than those obtained from muscle samples. This con-verges with previous studies conducted on Nacella species. The mean metal concentrations determined in viscera in two sampling campaigns decreased as follows: Zn > Cu > Cd > Ni > Cr > Pb. The higher metal accumulation found in the viscera suggest that accumulated metals are taken up mainly from diet. Cu and Ni were not detected in all the analyzed muscle samples and Pb levels were very low, which also converges with our previous assumptions about the Beagle Channel as a baseline eco-system for these pollutants. Comparing our mean levels of Cd, Cr, Cu, Pb and Zn in N. magellanica viscera samples with those of N. concinna collected in ice-impacted sites in Antarctica and other patellid limpets collected in Greece, the data shows lower levels than those obtained in other sites.

Considering the baseline metal levels in Italian seas, all metal levels in the Beagle Channel are within the normality range limits of metal concentration. However, the median Cd levels in the muscle and viscera of N. magellanica in the Beagle Channel resulted higher than those obtained for patellid limpets collected in the Italian seas. The higher Cd levels measured in M. chilensis and N. magel-lanica in the two sampling campaigns in 2005 and 2007 could be ascribed to the chemical environment which could leave a higher amount of bio-available cad-mium in seawater, but the total soluble cadmium was not detected in the sea-water, which infers additional investiga-tion is needed. Another possible reason could be the presence of some concomi-tant able to trigger Cd accumulation. The results here confirm that there are dif-ferent accumulation levels depending on the sampling site which could be attrib-uted to Cd in each site. Nacella species constitutes a popular food in the Beagle Channel areas together with Mytilus spe-cies. With regard to the intake of trace metals, the integrated evaluation shows that risks for humans seem unlikely for the regular consumption in the area.

Three years on from the end of One

Tonne Life, this ground-breaking project,

initiated by A-hus, Vattenfall and Volvo

Cars, has inspired a growing number

of people to choose products that help

them lead a climate-smart lifestyle. One

example of these active choices is the

Jogensjö family who are now enjoying a

comfortable, low-carbon lifestyle in the

house that was at the heart of the One

Tonne Life project.

“We’ve always believed in respecting

the environment in our day-to-day

lives. But we’ve still been pleasantly

surprised by how easy and comfortable a

climate-smart life is if you combine your

environmental commitment with the

latest technology,” says Tina Jogensjö,

who works as a creative producer at

Unicef.

One Tonne Life, the project where a

family tried to live on as little energy as

possible over a 6-month period, involved

the cooperation of A-hus, Vattenfall and

Volvo Cars, together with partners ICA

and Siemens, to create a climate-smart

life for the Lindell family. The test period

saw the Lindells cut their emissions from

their normal 7.3 tonnes of carbon dioxide

per year per person to 1.5 tonnes.

“We were interested and followed the

One Tonne Life project through the

media. The 80 per cent reduction in

the Lindell family’s carbon emissions

showed that it’s possible to make a real

di!erence given the right motivation,

know-how and technology. We estimate

that we generate around half the carbon

dioxide of an average Swedish family, but

without compromising on our quality of

life,” says Tina Jogensjö.

Vattenfall – smart solutions for lower

energy costs

Based on initiatives such as the

One Tonne Life project, Vattenfall has

developed a range of new products

and solutions for energy-e"cient living

and a sustainable lifestyle.

“It’s now easy for a lot of households

to signi#cantly cut their energy costs

and environmental impact by actively

monitoring their electricity consumption,

using more energy-e"cient appliances

and changing behaviour. We’re helping

the development of electrically powered

transport by providing simple charging

solutions for both the home and public

infrastructure,” says Lars Ejeklint, Energy

Expert at Vattenfall.

Find out more about One Tonne Life at

www.onetonnelife.com.

Pilot project enables climate-smart lifestyle

From pilot to reality. The Lindells with the Jögensjö family in the One Tonne Life house.

58

ConclusionM. chilensis and N. magellanica turned out to be very relevant for the study of coastal areas with very low levels of contamination considering their aptitude to accumulate higher levels of metals than those present in seawater. Comparative studies reveal that the results (except for Cd) are much lower than those corresponding to low-medium contaminated areas in the world. In the case of Cd, the levels found in mollusks of

the Beagle Channel remain lower than those from clearly contaminated areas. The high Cd levels and their differences between sites and periods need additional investigation. The hypothesis of Ushuaia Harbor as being the most contaminated site among the seven sampling locations must be reconsidered and apart from cadmium, the results confirm that Beagle Channel can be a reference eco-system for marine areas around the world.

NOTES:

Ahn, I-Y., Kim, K-W., Choi, H.J., (2002). A baseline study on metal concentration in the Antarctic limpet Nacella concinna (Gastropoda: Patellidae) on King George Island: variations with sex and body parts. Mar Pollut Bull 44:421-431

Çevik, U., Damla, N., Kobya, A.I., Bulut, V.N., Duran, C., Dalgic, G., Bozaci, R., (2008). Assessment of metal element concentrations in mussel (M. galloprovincialis) in Eastern Black Sea, Turkey. J Hazard Mater 160:396-401

Conti, M.E., Cecchetti, G., (2001). Biological monitoring: lichens as bioindicators of air pollution assessment – a review. Environ Pollut 114:471-492

Conti, M.E., Tudino, M.B., Muse, J.O., Cecchetti G.F., (2002). Biomonitoring of heavy metals and their species in the marine environment: the contribution of atomic absorption spectroscopy and inductively coupled plasma spectroscopy. Res Trends Appl Spectrosc 4:295-324

Conti, M.E., Cecchetti, G., (2003). A biomonitoring study: trace metals in algae and molluscs from Tyrrhenian coastal areas. Environ Res 93:99-112

Conti, M.E., Iacobucci, M., Cecchetti, G., (2005). A statistical approach applied to trace metal data from biomonitoring studies. Int J Environ Pollut 23:29-41

Conti, M.E., Iacobucci, M., Cecchetti, G., (2007). A biomonitoring study: trace metals in seagrass, algae and molluscs in a marine reference ecosystem (Southern Tyrrhenian Sea). Int J Environ Pollut 29:308-332

Conti, M.E., (ed) (2008). Biological monitoring: theory and applications. Bioindicators and biomarkers for environmental quality and human exposure assessment. The Sustainable World, Vol. 17. WIT Press, Southampton, UK

Conti, M.E., Pino, A., Botrè, F., Bocca, B., Alimonti, A., (2009). Lichen Usnea barbata as biomonitor of airborne elements deposition in the Province of Tierra del Feugo (southern Patagonia, Argentina). Ecotox Environ Saf 72:1082-1089

Conti, M.E., Finoia, M.G., (2010). Metals in molluscs and algae: a north-south Tyrrhenian sea baseline. J Hazard Mater 181:388-392

Conti, M.E., Stripeikis, J., Finoia, M.G., Tudino, M.B., (2011). Baseline trace metals in bivalve molluscs from the Beagle Channel, Patagonia (Argentina). Ecotoxicology 20:1341-1353

Conti, M.E., Stripeikis, J., Finoia, M.G., Tudino, M.B., (2012a). Baseline trace metals in gastropod mollusks from the Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego (Patagonia, Argentina). Ecotoxicology 21:1112-1125

Conti, M.E., Finoia, M.G., Bocca, B., Mele, G., Alimonti, A., Pino, A., (2012b). Atmospheric background trace elements deposition in Tierra del Fuego region (Patagonia, Argentina), using transplanted Usnea barbata lichens. Environ Monit Asses 184: 527-538

De Moreno, J.E.A., Gerpe, M.S., Moreno, V.J., Vodopivez, C., (1997). Heavy metals in Antarctic organisms. Polar Biol 17:131-140

Giovanardi, F., Finoia, M.G., Russo, S., Amori, M., Di Lorenzo, B., (2006). Coastal waters monitoring data: frequency distributions of the principal water quality variables. J Limnol 65:65-82

Johnson, N.L., (1949). System of frequency curves generated by methods of translation. Biometrika 36:149-175

Maanan, M., (2007). Biomonitoring of heavy metals using Mytilus galloprovincialis in Safi coastal waters, Morocco. Environ Toxicol 22:525-531

Muse, J.O., Carducci, C.N., Stripeikis, J.D., Tudino, M.B., Fernández, F.M., (2006). A link between lead and cadmium kinetic speciation in seawater and accumulation by the green algae, Ulva lactuca. Environ Pollut 141:126-130

Özden, O., Ulusoy, S., Erkan, N., (2010). Study on the behavior of the trace metal and macro minerals in Mytilus galloprovincialis as a bioindicator species: the case of Marmara Sea, Turkey. J Verbr Lebensm 5:407-412

Pino, A., Alimonti, A., Conti, M.E., Bocca, B., (2010). Iridium, platinum and rhodium baseline concentration in lichens from Tierra del Fuego (South Patagonia, Argentina). J Environ Monitor 12:1857-1863

Rainbow, P.S., Phillips, D.J.H., (1993). Cosmopolitan biomonitors of trace metals. Mar. Pollution Bull 26:593-601

the Beagle Channel can be a reference ecosystem for marine areas around the world

60

United Nations reports warn that South Sudan’s war could degenerate into wide-scale famine particularly since people had difficulties planting crops before the rainy season began in May. While the UN is asking for more aid from Western countries to cover the costs of food drops by air, there are increasing hopes that food needs in South Sudan can be covered by increasing local food production in Western Equatoria, a fertile region located in the south-western part of the country. In the newest country in the world, where international donors give large amounts of aid money for development, a burning question remains: how to provide food security most effectively to this region?

Writer: Raluca Raduta is a development researcher. She visited South Sudan in March 2013 and has worked for development agencies in Sudan, Jordan, and Bosnia & Herzegovina since 2009. She obtained an MPhil in Environment, Society and Development from Cambridge University in October 2013.

The author is grateful for the insights of those participating in interviews: South Sudanese NGOs and CBOs, the United Nations World Food Program, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in South Sudan, and Honey Care Africa.

Photographer: Andreea Campeanu.

South Sudan: Status Report

61

Overview 75% of South Sudan’s land area is suitable for agriculture, and about half of the total land space is suitable for cultivation. The African Development Bank states in its 2013 Infrastructure Action Plan that with the development of appropriate infrastructure, South Sudan could become “the breadbasket of Africa”.

The government of South Sudan finances 98% of its budget through oil rev-enues. The oil fields are located in conflict areas, which have reduced exports and thus the country’s GDP growth since December 2013. South Sudan has received more than $4 billion in foreign aid since 2005, largely from the UK, the U.S., Norway, and the Netherlands. Source: CIA

Image (above) : North-west suburb of Juba, capital of South Sudan, “Secession of South Sudan”, Revolve #2, Summer 2011.Source: Jure Erzen

Three years after the exclusive cover feature by Bostjan Videmsek and Jure Erzen about South Sudan becoming the 193rd country in July 2011, Raluca Raduta describes the ongoing tribal violence and the challenges confronted by foreign aid and local organizations to achieve more sustainable development.

62

still causing violence in the northern Abyei region, where land is crucial for both sides of the conflict: the Dinka Ngok farmers and the Myseria Arab cattle-herders. A local referen-dum held in October 2013 was supposed to determine whether its people want to join the south or the north, but it was unilateral and unrecognized. Another territory quest is taking place in the Nuba region of Sudan between the Christian Nuba people and the Sudan’s government army, displacing over 200,000 people (UN). And yet another con-flict in the South Sudanese eastern area of Jonglei prolonged for years, bringing daily deaths in violence between armed ethnic groups over land, water and pasture.

Food shortages are a yearly problem. According to the United Nations, at least

Since December 2013, a struggle for power between Riek Machar, the former vice-president and the current president of the country, Salva Kir, led to wide-spread and increasingly bloody violence. The fight-ing emanates largely from ethnic violence between the Dinka, the largest ethnic tribe in South Sudan and mainly agro-pastoralists, and the Nuer, a tribe with a long history of resistance to different government rulings. The government’s army, largely composed of Dinka, and the rebel factions mostly of Nuer origin, are clashing in repeated attempts to gain control over the same locations: the oil-rich areas at the northern border with Sudan. On top of the appalling

death of over 10,000 and the displacement of another 1 million, the top UN official in South Sudan is also worried about the 3.7 million people at risk of severe food insecu-rity. As happens in most conflicts, access to food is limited and people go days without eating. In displacement, the only option is relying on humanitarian food aid. According to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), 1.3 million South Sudanese are con-stantly dependent on food aid.

But neither wars nor food shortages are special to South Sudan where several con-flicts are happening simultaneously in differ-ent areas. Border disputes with Sudan are

Conflict, Aid, and Food

63

Image (60-61): A WFP plane during a food drop operation in conflict-affected Nyal, Unity State, South Sudan. Image (left): A girl singing in a church choir in Yambio, Western Equatoria State,

South Sudan. Image (below): People displaced by conflict collect their food bags after waiting in the line for food distribution in Nyal, Unity State, South Sudan.

30% of the country’s population is food insecure every year, which means that they do not have enough to eat and have to rely on coping strategies, such as reducing the number of meals per day, eating smaller portions, or restricting adult consumption. Food shortages affect the South Sudanese due to yearly drought, poor harvests of pre-vious years, high prices of imported food, financial insecurities and violence.

Different parts of South Sudan are either affected by markets being disrupted by violence, by flooding that destroys crops, by difficult access to food imported from neighboring countries due to little infra-structure in remote areas, or by violence displacing people, making it impossible for them to grow crops and raise livestock. Dur-

ing the 2012 Sahel drought, food imports were reduced and supplies quickly became insufficient to feed the country’s population.

About 85% of South Sudanese rely on agri-culture for their survival, half of the popu-lation spends its entire income on food, and about 90% of the land is considered suitable for agriculture. Agriculture and livestock are the main form of livelihoods across the country and are largely practiced for sustenance. Unfortunately, although the country has the resources needed to be the main exporter in the region, it relies heavily on food imports to cover 50% of the food needs of its citizens.

This should not be the case. Even if food cannot be produced in war zones, accord-ing to private businesses on the ground, there are regions where conflicts have not displaced people and where droughts and floods did not destroy crops. One such region is Western Equatoria, one of the 10 states in South Sudan, located in the south-western part of the country. Here, the capacity to produce food is so high that it could provide enough for its 600,000 inhabitants with surpluses that could feed the 10 million people living in South Sudan. Ryan, Country Manager at Honey Care Africa, a private business working in Western Equatoria, thinks that

According to the United Nations World Food Program, 1.3 million South Sudanese are

constantly dependent on food aid.

64

Sustainable development is often understood by the developed countries

as better environmental protection and by developing countries as more economic

development.

this region alone could feed the entire country and potentially even export to neighboring countries. While humanitar-ian food drops are the solution in conflict areas, for the peaceful areas, aid agen-cies are implementing projects on eco-nomic recovery to develop the country’s agriculture sector.

Local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) implement aid programs funded by Western governments to help develop livelihoods through agriculture. These efforts were led by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) since 2008 to focus on promoting “sustain-able peace and development” in South Sudan through “sustainable livelihoods”.

The government backed this approach by incorporating sustainable livelihoods in its strategies and action plans. “We encourage people to engage in all kinds of livelihoods activities” because “the more busy people are with livelihoods programs, the less violent they get,” says the representative of an NGO first estab-lished in Khartoum in the 1990s.

Financing sustainable livelihoods pro-grams in Mozambique managed to bring peace and development, but some scep-tics argue that an extensive assessment of the nature of the conflict, of the insti-tutions involved, and of social dynamics, has to take place before any type of liveli-hoods development programs are imple-

mented. Only when considering the full context can livelihood development be successful in preventing violence. When it comes to stopping conflict, aid attempts are rarely efficient. A Community Based Organization (CBO) describes them as “a waste of time”: consultants are brought in to train people on “the concept of peace, but the people taking part in the training are not the ones fighting on the ground,” explains the CBO leader.

Foreign aid can bring some degree of development, and there are many cherry-picked success stories posted on the websites of aid agencies. In South Sudan, the aid community is developing livelihoods by funding different agricul-

Image (top): People displaced by conflict waiting in line for food distribution in Nyal, Unity State, South Sudan. Image (right): Most of the food imported into South Sudan comes from Uganda. Due to repeated yearly floods, trucks often have to wait for days to pass

the border: many fruits and vegetables rot and have to be thrown away.

65

The Humanitarian Intervention Debate

basis that it does more harm than good, while development scholars warn about the manipulation of semantics. Different mean-ings can be easily assigned to the same concept and sustainable development can be understood by the developed countries as better environmental protection, and by the developing ones as more economic development. In South Sudan, the end of the last war meant independence, and independence meant development. Seces-sion from the north in 2011 brought the assumption that the full responsibility for

The aid community, and therefore everyone following its work, distinguishes between humanitarian aid needed to relief human sufferings through food, tents and medi-cine, and development aid as something more ambiguous and less popular. Most often, humanitarian aid is seen as good and necessary, while its twin, despite the recent positive sounding re-branding as “sustain-able development” is seen as a political and often unnecessary exercise. Some econo-mists, including the popular Dambisa Moyo, discard development aid altogether on the

ture and livestock solutions. However, since the escalation of the current con-flict, reports and interviews with WFP and FAO show that aid-funded livelihood programs in Western Equatoria suffered a reduction in funding and attention, as resources had to be shifted to cover more urgent humanitarian needs of the people displaced by violence. Honey Care Africa, operating as a social enterprise promoting sustainable beekeeping and honey production across East Africa, emphasizes that peaceful areas “could and should continue to increase food production with the help of development partners to contribute towards food secu-rity for the whole country.”

66

duction rely on separate assessments and on the use of Kenyan fertilizers, in places where “the soil doesn’t lack the nutrients needed to ensure 100% production”, as a farmer and CBO manager explains.

The aid community can help where busi-nesses do not have the incentives and where government programs do not have the resources. Their work through the local NGOs is welcomed as long as it is context specific, and not focused on providing one-size-fits-all band-aid solutions. In Western Equatoria, farmers want to be trained on how to produce more, before being trained on post-harvesting solutions and on how to manage warehouses or equipment that they “have not even seen with their own eyes and they have not even heard about them; if you tell people how to increase production,

Western Equatoria is not producing enough food to feed the population of South Sudan because most of its people are faced with various challenges when wanting to grow food for large distribution and sale. These challenges are identified by private busi-nesses, the aid community and the local NGOs working to help this region develop its agriculture sector.

First: there is insufficient equipment needed to store and transport large amounts of food and poor road infrastruc-ture for food to be transported to markets, with the only long-distance paved road existing between Juba, the capital, and the border town Nimule, near Uganda. WFP has acknowledged this and started to work on “rehabilitating roads to link agri-culturally productive areas with markets in

development resides in the new national identity: “It is our country, now we have to develop it”, says the representative of another small organization funded through foreign aid programs to promote develop-ment in South Sudan.

Humanitarian and development aid both draw their origins in the European Enlighten-ment belief that economic growth measured in GDP will produce development for all, and can reduce humanitarian crises and make them more manageable. As anthropologist Arturo Escobar notes, development allowed post-Second World War rich countries to

Western Equatoria”, as the Public Informa-tion Officer of WFP explains.

Second: there is a lack of a consistent mar-ket and a need to “link small-holder farmers to markets to encourage them to expand production”, as the Honey Care Africa rep-resentative describes. Some aid agencies aim their livelihoods programs at giving farmers information about markets, and FAO and WFP in particular, started to buy grown nuts, sesame seeds, and sorghum from local producers.

Third: there is no Agriculture Research Center in South Sudan that would conduct investigations on the existing type of soils, the need for fertilizers, and on ways to increase land productivity that are context and soil specific. Attempts to increase pro-

perceive people and cultures as abstract statistics in the charts of progress. When their position is not satisfactory, the moral duty to intervene and help enters. However, like humanitarian aid, development inter-ventions focus on solutions to existing prob-lems and not on comprehensive long-term progress. Projects are designed to address problems now, but not their deeper causes. Competition for aid money has translated to the local NGOs, who overlap their work in an attempt to satisfy their donors’ requests, and are “just gambling, not really helping people”, as a representative of a women’s association explains.

Developing Western Equatoria

About 85% of South Sudanese rely on agriculture for their survival and half of the

population spends its entire income on food.

Image (right): Most of the food imported into South Sudan comes from Uganda. The border between the two countries is flooded several

times every year, which blocks the passage of food trucks.

67

then they will produce enough and will need the knowledge of post-harvesting, but this knowledge should not be given in trainings held by consultants brought in from Kenya or Tanzania or elsewhere, who use scientific words that farmers here don’t understand,” describes a Western Equatorian farmer.

While training programs to increase produc-tion are useful and welcomed by farmers, the biggest obstacle in increasing food pro-duction and distribution in Western Equa-toria remains “the informal taxes”. Sadly, social enterprises such as Honey Care Africa who recognize “even during this cur-rent conflict, that farmers have been able to sell considerably more honey from this one harvest than they have ever before”, are being driven away by the amount of “taxes” charged at checkpoints for the movement

of produce within South Sudan, for which no receipts are given upon payment.

This type of enterprises that apply for profit strategies to maximize benefits for people and the environment, rather than profits for external shareholders, are crucial for South Sudan’s development beyond its GDP. They encourage trade, but also welcome aid where needed. More importantly, they see a concerted effort from government, local leaders, businesses, NGOs and aid community as the only answer to sustain-able development. Western Equatoria can produce and distribute enough food to feed South Sudan’s people when all parties work together to address the problems that affects them all. And Western Equatoria is just one example of a peaceful and fertile region in South Sudan.

In a time when the Food from Nowhere regime, that brought cheapness, conve-nience and the invisible origin of food, is being fought against by people in the north hemisphere through movements such as Slow Food, Food Sovereignty, and Fair Trade, South Sudan might be closer than ever to sustainable food production and consump-tion. Food shortages and the obstacles of producing and distributing food can be taken as opportunities. Small-holder and family farmers could work together to transport food to faraway markets and win the battle against “informal taxes”. Local NGOs, foreign aid agencies, local leaders and government institutions could achieve sustainable devel-opment in South Sudan by working together to link food and agriculture to social and environmental justice for the benefit of entire South Sudanese communities.

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69

Hydro Power in Rural Africa

Writer: Jacopo Pendezza is a Rural Electrification Project Manager at CEFA in Tanzania. He has a BA in International Development and Cooperation from Università di Bologna (Italy) and a MA in European Studies from Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium). Jacopo specializes in project management, energy policy, rural development and non-profit/for-profit partnerships.

Photographer: Giacomo Spigarelli

Small hydro power is one of the most viable options to providing electricity to rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa with the force of water. Tanzania has all the geographic conditions for scaling-up small hydro power projects to the national level. The example of a non-profit/for-profit partnership between CEFA, an Italian NGO addressing rural electrification, and a private partner to realize a small hydro power project in Ninga, Tanzania, is a great starting point to expand rural energy access and meet national targets for electrification and energy production.

Renewable energy technologies have great potential to contribute to rural energy sup-ply in sub-Saharan Africa. While the energy transition potential is tremendous across Africa, in most cases government investments and donors’ budgets have unfortunately not been financing sustainable small hydro power plants that could provide energy access in a decentralized manner to rural populations. However, energy production and distribution in Tanzania is now a national priority and a

promising business opportunity, because policy and legal frameworks provide a good environment for investments and subsidies. Still, there is a great need for mobilizing financial resources to expand energy access for rural communities. Non-profit/for-profit partnerships (NPFPP) can occupy a fruitful “middle ground” between commercial private sector projects, focused primarily on profit and public/non-profit sector projects focused on enhancing energy access.

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In sub-Saharan Africa, biomass energy continues to dominate national energy portfolios with around 625 million people being dependent on wood and charcoal for cooking and heating. Yet 585 million people live without access to electricity: sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the lowest energy access in the world. Elec-trification rates are particularly low in rural areas (with the exception of South Africa); in most countries, less than 10% of the popu-lation is not connected. Sub-Saharan Africa electrification is prevented by the high cost of grid expansion and by the limited production capacity and dependence on imported fossil fuels. In sub-Saharan Africa, biomass energy continues to dominate national energy portfolios with around 625 million people being dependent on wood

and charcoal for cooking and heating. Yet 585 million people live without access to electricity: sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the lowest energy access in the world. Electrification rates are particularly low in rural areas (with the exception of South Africa); in most countries, less than 10% of the population is not connected. Sub-Saharan Africa electrification is prevented by the high cost of grid expansion and by the limited production capacity and dependence on imported fossil fuels.

Small hydro power, along with photovoltaic panels, are the most viable and feasible options for water and solar power to provide electricity for lighting and communication as well as to provide sufficient power capacity to deliver the mini-grid the basis for various

forms of productive uses of electricity includ-ing small industrial applications. Typical capacity ranges from a few kilowatts (kW) for micro-hydro to a few megawatts (MW) for small-hydro, depending on various fac-tors such as hydrology, load demand, and geographical constraints. Small hydro power offers a chance to tackle the three major challenges for developing the African energy sector by helping to increase rural electrifi-cation rates, installing additional capacity for national and local grids (independent from imported fuels), and promoting productive use of energy in poor areas.

Twelve percent of the world’s hydroelectric potential is in Africa – and due to geo-graphical conditions most of this potential is located in the sub-Saharan region – but

Africa’s Great Untapped Potential

71

and a number of religious mission facilities and mechanical mills. In most African coun-tries, existing small hydro plants are funded by NGOs and international donors; most are not well documented and remain isolated projects that have not been scaled-up.

In the last decade, however, some countries have made progress in promoting small hydro more systematically, moving away from demonstration and pilot programs to large-scale initiatives. In countries like Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa and Tanzania, decentralized renewable technologies such as small hydro power have been mainstreamed in regional and national policy documents. In Rwanda, small hydro contributes a significant por-tion to installed capacity and even micro hydro is beginning to make a significant contribution. Key to the Rwandan success has been a sector-wide approach by vari-ous donors, led by a strong Ministry for Infrastructure who sets clear targets and provides a policy framework and budgets for the electrification of the country. While governments and donors in some coun-tries bundle their efforts together to push for greater electrification, private project developers are also taking an increas-ing interest in decentralized renewable technologies. The pioneers are leading to larger, more sophisticated companies with

in no other continent is the gap between actual and technically available hydro power higher than in Africa where only 5% of this potential is currently exploited. Looking at the small and micro hydro systems, the gap is probably even higher. While China has developed over 45,000 plants of 10 MW, in Africa there are no more than a few hundred small hydro plants in operation.

Small and micro hydro plants have a long history in Africa, but have not proliferated on a massive scale, despite the favorable regional geographic conditions. Early elec-trification projects comparable to European developments include, for example, the first hydroelectric plant built in 1895 in Cape Town, South Africa. Such hydroelectric sys-tems operate on large farms and industries,

strong links to international players. The European Small Hydro Association (ESHA) considers Uganda and Kenya as countries with promising short-term small hydro power markets, while countries such as Mozambique, Zambia and Rwanda offer good medium-term perspectives.

Due to a lack of reliable and comparable information, it is difficult to elaborate a base-line for small hydro development in Africa. This is true for mini and micro hydro sites, which are documented only in a few well-known cases. In many countries, most of the existing plants still date back to colonial times; many of which were established by church missions. In Tanzania, for example, more than 16 small systems were installed by church missions in the 1960s and 1970s. In Kenya, small hydro plants from the 1950s are still operating. In South Africa, there are hundreds of de-commissioned plants, waiting for rehabilitation, while only a few new plants have been constructed in the last years. Many of the old sites mentioned in historic reports are forgotten and cannot be located today. Figures about recent projects are easier to obtain because government action plans and information of ongoing donor funded projects allow for more accu-rate estimations. Tanzania has good natural resources and the political willingness to tap into its small hydro power potential.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the lowest energy

access in the world

Electricity access in 2010 - Regional aggregates

Source: IEA, World Energy Outlook 2012

72

Hydro power is the most popular and the oldest renewable energy sources used to produce electricity for rural grids. Abundant and old experiences exist in several develop-ing countries such as Tanzania. The assessed potential of small hydro power resources of 10 MW in Tanzania comes out to be about 480 MW. Small hydro projects contribute only 15 MW to installed grid-connections, and most of these projects are privately-owned and are not connected to the national electricity grid. Five sites in the 300–8,000 kW range are owned by Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO), the national distribution utility. Examples of privately-developed projects include Mwenga, a 4 MW hydro plant that supplies power to nearby rural villages, with excess energy sold to TANESCO; AHEPO, a 1 MW privately-owned small hydro project in Mbinga, currently under construction, that will supply power to TANESCO’s isolated grid and directly to communities.

Different instruments and projects are set up by the government and donors to support small hydro power expansion. The Ministry of Energy and Minerals (MEM) is now con-ducting feasibility studies in eight regions: Morogoro, Iringa, Njombe, Mbeya, Ruvuma, Rukwa, Katavi, and Kagera. The British NGO, GVEP International, in partnership with the Tanzanian Rural Energy Agency (REA), is supporting the development of six hydro mini-grids, with a total capacity of 7.4-8.8 MW. The REA has awarded some 20 match-

Tanzania’s Water Power

Non-profit/for-profit partnerships are one of the best mechanisms to overcome budgetary

constraints for providing energy access

ing grants to private sector developers for small hydro feasibility studies. In addition, the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) has approved funding for renewable energy resource mapping, starting with small hydro power, including two-year hydrology measurements. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) is co-funding the development of six mini-grids based on micro hydro power, while the European Union is financing four hydro power projects, including one developed by CEFA.

73

Rural Electrification in TanzaniaThe European Committee for Training and Agriculture (CEFA) is an Italian NGO that promotes initiatives of development, coop-eration and international volunteer services. Founded in 1972 by a group of agricultural cooperatives based in Bologna, CEFA supports projects aiming to promote integrated self-development in rural regions of the Mediterra-nean, East Africa and Central/South America. Active in Tanzania since 1976, CEFA promotes interventions in rural electrification, water supply, agriculture and agro-processing. CEFA’s commitment to rural electrification in Tanzania began 25 years ago and in this period the organization has realized three mini hydro-electric power plants, providing electricity to hundreds of people living in the rural areas of the Iringa and Njombe Regions, in the Southern Highlands.

Careful planning procedures for technical capacity, good institutional arrangements, managerial capacity and economic consider-

ations, as well as multi-stakeholder involve-ment from the planning phase onwards, have resulted in the sustainable operation of the three hydro power plants. Such commit-ments in the sector continue today with a current upgrade project in Ikondo, a very isolated village in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania, allowing more and more families to benefit from the opportunities offered by having electricity in their villages. This project, co-funded by European Union under the 10th European Development Fund (EDF), started in September 2011 and by 2015 will permit an upgrade in output of the power plant to some 430 kW, and to increase the actual distribution grid reaching four other villages, connecting to the Matembwe grid and to the TANESCO grid in order to sell the excess produced energy to the national utility.

CEFA is aware that only with a qualitative jump can impacts be incisive for a large population that needs energy access, and has therefore

decided to take advantage of the opportuni-ties and instruments that are now in place in Tanzania to design a new project, the size of which significantly differs from previous ones. The site for the next intervention is in the Rufiji River Basin in the Njombe Region. The Ninga small hydro project, with an output of 5 MW, will provide reliable and affordable electricity to about 2,000 households and small enterprises in seven villages, and will sell the surplus energy to the main national grid, increasing the regional availability of power and assuring the financial sustainability of the system. How is such a productive and replicable solution to secure funding for this sustainable project?

74

This article was presented at the POWER-GEN AFRICA conference and exhibition “Equipping Africa’s Energy Future” in Cape Town on 17-19 March 2014.

The next POWER-GEN AFRICA “Emerging Opportunities in the World’s Fastest Growing Continent” will take place in Cape Town on 15-17 July 2015.

For more details, visit: www.powergenafrica.com To learn more about CEFA projects, visit: www.cefaonlus.it/uk

Government investments and donors’ budgets have been overall insufficient to expand access to electricity in rural areas in a sustainable manner. Mobilizing financial resources to expand local energy services delivery in Tan-zania is therefore an imperative. In a scenario of diminishing funds for development programs with simultaneous increasing demands from donors in terms of the impact of actions sup-ported, a new approach is necessary regard-ing the action of non-profit actors, like CEFA, in developing countries. Non-profit/for-profit partnerships (NPFPP) are one of the best mechanisms to supplement and overcome budgetary constraints for widening access to energy services, as they can allocate project-risks between the public/non-profit and private/business sectors. A partnership between non-profit and for-profit actors is a good solution to rapidly mobilize financial resources, expand energy access, enhance the empowerment of

local communities, and meet national targets for electrification and energy production.

Profit motivations are blended with social concerns and empowerment of communi-ties. The NPFPP model operates on the twin foundations of sharing risks and rewards: risk-sharing is reflected by the resources invested by the private actor and non-profit actor in the partnership. Providing rewards is usually in proportion to the risk taken. Additionally, rewards are reflected in the availability of tangible incentives for the dif-ferent players in NPFPP: to fulfill corporate social responsibility and cost recovery/profit for the private actor; achieving its mandate to deliver basic services to local communi-ties for the non-profit actor; and availability and access to basic services for the target communities. This incentive system is the key to the sustainability of any NPFPP venture.

CEFA’s experience suggests that including multiple stakeholders in program design, implementation, and evaluation can enhance the development of renewable energies. Involving women’s groups, multilateral donors, rural cooperatives, local govern-ment, local micro-finance institutions, NGOs and other members of civil society, like consumers, can increase both the per-formance and legitimacy of partnerships. They improve performance since input from multiple stakeholders can accelerate feedback; they improve legitimacy since programs with a broader support base and community involvement are less likely to be opposed. Above all, the partnership benefits from the larger pool of resources coming from the public and private sectors, and the resources (social, human, financial, political and psychological capital) of the communi-ties also improve in return.

A Bigger NPFPP Model

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Conference Session Partner

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76

WarkaWater

Project

The

77

Warka Water is a handmade 10-meter tower made out of bamboo that can collect potable water from the air by condensation on hanging fabrics. The lightweight structure is designed with parametric computing and is easy to assemble and repair, thus very user-friendly for villagers in rural areas of developing countries. The structure can be lifted and fixed to the ground by four people, no scaffolding is needed; materials include junco, iron wire, polyester ropes and polyethylene textile. The Warka must be fixed with tensioning cables, for ground stabilization, against strong winds. Designed by Architecture and Vision, the concept was implemented during the last two years with several experimental prototypes. The goal is that by 2015 Warka Water will be realized in Ethiopia.

78

Images : All images by Architecture and Vision, except image top left and top right by Gabriele Rigon.

InspirationFrom the aesthetic point of view, the project was inspired by tradi-tional Ethiopian craftsmanship and shelters. The social-environmental aspect was inspired by the Warka tree, which combines and fulfills many ecological and sociological functions in Ethiopia. The idea to get water from the sky is not new; it goes back at least two thousand years ago: Pliny the Elder recounts in his Historia Naturalis that the inhabit-ants of a barren island in the Canaries used to climb at sunset on the hills near the sea to collect the fog on the branches of the tall and majes-tic sacred tree where it gathered and condensed during the night.

The principle of collecting water from the air comes from observing and mimicking nature: the famous Namib beetle shows how nature can adapt to specific environmental conditions with rather simple, but astonishing solutions. The beetle collects water in the morning by placing its carapace diagonally in line with the wind that carries droplets of dew that con-dense to form drops of water. The tri-angulated double curvature structure of Warka Water is inspired by the tra-ditional Italian fishing traps, Nassi di Giunco, still used today in the Medi-terranean island of Sicily.

79

The Name

Context

IdeaTrees are beautiful natural structures that create natural resources and shelters for life. In pastoral Ethiopian culture, the Warka tree is an institu-tion, providing shade for traditional public gatherings and for schooling. These trees are a very important part of the ecosystem and culture of Ethi-opia and its disappearance seems unfortunately unavoidable: 60% of Ethiopias forests were decimated in the last 40 years.

“In the mountain regions of Ethiopia, women and children walk every day for several hours to collect water from sources often unsafe that they share with animals or that are at risk of con-tamination. This situation makes their life even more difficult combined with endless household chores and lack of education,” says Arturo Vittori, Director of Architecture and Vision.

Warka Water offers an alternative to this dramatic situation: a vertical structure with a perforated fabric hanging inside to collect drinking water from the air by condensation: the triangular mesh structure is made of natural materials such as junco and can be built by villagers. The struc-ture weighs only 60 kg and consists of 5 modules that are installed from the bottom to the top; and can be lifted and assembled by four people without scaffolding. The tower can collect up to 100 liters of drinking water per day.

80

81

For more on Warka Water: www.architectureandvision.com

Credits SupportConcept: Architecture and Vision

Arturo Vittori & Andreas Vogler

Collaborators: Raffi Tchakerian, Tadesse Girmay

Textile Design: Precious Desperts

Communication: Gianni Massironi

Italian Cultural Institute Addis Ababa

Ethiopian Institute of Architecture (EiABC), Addis Ababa University

University of Venice (IUAV)

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